How to Use Google Sheets - Beginner's Guide

Open any web browser and type drive.google.com into the address bar. Sign in with your Google account. If you don't have one yet, click Create Account and walk through the free signup - it takes about two minutes.

Sheets lives inside Google Drive. There's nothing to download, no Microsoft license to buy, and no install screen to click through. Your Chromebook, an old laptop, and a brand new PC all behave the same way because the whole spreadsheet runs in the browser tab.

Click the colored plus sign on the top-left of Google Drive labeled New. From the dropdown pick Google Sheets to open a blank spreadsheet right away.

If you don't want to start from scratch, click the small arrow next to Google Sheets to open the template gallery. There are ready-made layouts for budgets, invoices, schedules, expense reports, and to-do lists. Templates save time when the structure already exists and you just need to plug in your own data.

Your new sheet opens with the title Untitled spreadsheet at the top-left. Click that text, type a real name like Annual Budget, and press Enter.

Right next to the title is a small folder icon. Click it to file the spreadsheet inside a specific Drive folder so you can find it later. You can pick an existing folder or click the new folder icon at the bottom of the panel to create one. There is no Save button anywhere - Google Sheets writes every keystroke to your Drive in the background. The line under the menu reads All changes saved in Drive.

The letters A, B, C running across the top are columns. The numbers 1, 2, 3 down the left side are rows. Each little box where a column and row meet is a cell, and every cell has an address built from its column letter and row number - the cell highlighted at column B, row 9 is called B9.

Click any cell and start typing. Press Enter to drop one row down, or press Tab to move one column to the right. Cell addresses become important the moment you start writing formulas, because that's how you tell Sheets which numbers to work with.

Type your column headers in row 2 - in the demo: Expenses, Monthly Cost, Yearly Cost. Then fill the rows below with your data. Tab moves you across the row, Enter drops to the next row.

To format, drag across the cells you want to style. The toolbar at the top has bold, italic, font size, text color, fill color, alignment, and Merge cells (which turns three side-by-side cells into one big title bar). To display a column as money, click the column letter to select the whole column, click the 123 menu, and pick Currency. Sheets adds the dollar sign and two decimal places for you.

Sorting in Sheets is on the Data menu. The trick is to highlight only the rows you want sorted before you do it - leave the title row and any header row alone, or they'll get sorted in with the data.

Click and drag across just the rows of real data, including both the label column and the number column so each row's pieces stay together. Open the Data menu, pick Sort range, and choose A to Z for alphabetical or sort by column for numbers. The selected block reorders, the rest of the sheet stays in place.

Formulas are why spreadsheets exist. The simplest one is =SUM, which adds a range of cells for you. Click the cell where you want the total to appear. Type an equals sign, then SUM, then an open parenthesis: =SUM(

Now click the first number cell and drag across all the cells you want to include. Sheets fills in the cell range for you (something like B3:B12). Close the parenthesis and press Enter. The total shows up. Change any number in the source cells later, and the total updates by itself. That live recalculation is the real reason to use a formula instead of a calculator.

Click the first cell in your Yearly Cost column. Type =B3*12 and press Enter - Sheets multiplies the monthly cost in B3 by 12 to give you the yearly figure.

Now select that cell again. In the bottom-right corner is a small blue square. Click and drag it down the column over the rows you want to fill. Sheets copies the formula and adjusts the row number for each row: B4*12, B5*12, and so on. One formula fills the whole column. If the monthly cost in any row changes, the yearly cost for that row recalculates automatically.

Click the green Share button at the top-right. A panel opens called Share with people and groups. Type the person's email address into the People field.

Now pick what they can do. Click the dropdown next to their name and choose one of three levels: Editor lets them change anything in the sheet, Commenter lets them leave comments without editing the data, Viewer is read-only. Tick Notify people, write a short message so they know what they're looking at, and click Send. They get an email and can open the sheet right away. To download a copy outside Drive, go to File then Download and pick Excel (.xlsx) or PDF.