Waffle Bytes

A small update has happened in Google Docs.  The Page break and Column break have now been grouped together into a sub-menu called Break .  They can still be found under the Insert menu. 

(Part of my administrative assistant series on Google Sheets.) There are several ways to insert rows and/or columns in a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.  The easiest way is to highlight the row (or column) you want to add next to by clicking on the row or column name (the letter or number...).  Then use one of these methods: Go to the Insert Menu and select Row above or Row below, as wanted Right click on select Row above or Row below, as wanted But what about if you want to insert more than one row?  Do you have to add one row at a time? NO - you do not. You can instead highlight as many rows (or columns) as you wish to add - Then using one of the two methods above add MULTIPLE rows or columns at one time - A time saver for those of you that were adding individual rows or columns :-)

I'm working with several people whom are dealing with very large spreadsheets right now.  Unfortunately it took me too long to realize that they were unaware of this very useful Sheets feature - the ability to freeze some of the rows and columns so they could always view (in their case) the student names in the first column, and the data fields in the first row. Here is a spreadsheet with some sample data.  I want to always see the top row (Row 1) and the first column (Column A) - Go to the View menu, mouse over the first option of Freeze, and you get a pop-up that shows your choices for freezing rows and columns - The options 1 row/column and 2 rows/columns are available as they are the most common needs.  But occasionally you need more than that, so there is the customizable option of Up to the current row/column - this is based on the cell you current have active (selected) on the spreadsheet. Once you select what you want to freeze, a think gray border li...

Finally!  You can create and use columns in a Google Document...without the hack of inserting a table!! Columns is now an option in the Format menu (between "Line spacing" and "Lists").  You can select between 1, 2 and 3 columns - Selecting More options... brings up the following pop-up -  Again, in the pop-up, you can select between 1, 2 and 3 columns -  You can also change the spacing between columns, and select to have a line in that space -  It is important to note that the line will not appear between the columns unless you actually use both columns -  This also means there is an additional option in the Insert menu of a Column break -   And, you can apply columns to a section of the document if wanted - 

Today I had the need to take a comma separated list from a form and create a column with the unique entries from that list.  Is it doable with Google Spreadsheets?  Most definitely! Here are the steps: 1. Use the SPLIT function to divide your entries to individual cells.  This will use as many columns as number of entries.  ( More info about SPLIT: the first parameter is the cell the data is coming from, the second parameter is what is used to divide the information.  Since I don't want the comma OR the space, my second parameter has both in the quotation marks, so: quote comma space quote .) =SPLIT(A1, ", " ) 2. Fill down as needed 3. Use the UNIQUE function to start creating your new list =UNIQUE(C1:C) 4. Add addition columns of information with curly brackets & semi-colons =UNIQUE({C1:C; D1:D; E1:E; F1:F; G1:G}) 5. Add the SORT function if you want the list alphabetized =SORT(UNIQUE({C1:C; D1:D; E1:E; F1:F; G1:G}) That...

There are times where I really want to utilize a 2 column layout in a Google Document.  Unfortunately, columns are not a feature built in to Google Documents.  So I'm providing two work-arounds for creating that layout look without actually using columns over the next two newsletters.  This week, we will look at how to accomplish this with a table. Method #1 - Utilizing Tables One workaround is to use a two column table.  Create a 2 X 1 table: If you right click on the table, you get a choice in the menu of Table Properties: In the Table Properties window, you can change the border to "0": This will "hide" the border so the area looks similar to a two-column section in a document.  You can even adjust the widths of each "column" if you want.