Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #232!

We're in the home stretch of 2022, with Christmas fast approaching. There's still time for a final sprint to wrap things up for this year, before enjoying some downtime with the family.

Then, it's all eyes on 2023 and getting excited about new projects for the new year.

➜ News

I.
​In an earlier newsletter — Sheets Tip #229 — I shared a post about a tech recruiter learning Apps Script to automate repetitive tasks in his work.

Well, he's followed up with part II and part III, about his continued education with Apps Script, this time looking at more advanced topics like CLASP and git.

II.​
You can now resize your pivot table editor sidebar window, useful when you're using long column names.

​Read more on the Workspace Updates blog​

III.​
A Google Sheets Advent Calendar for you 🎄

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Use your knowledge of Google Sheets formulas to navigate the escape room. Not to worry, there are hints along the way.

This might be the most fun you’ve had in spreadsheets all year!

Play the Escape Room

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➜ Google Sheets Tip #232: New Timeline View in Sheets

Here is your Google Sheets tip, which you can think of as your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form.

What is this Timeline view? A new chart type in Google Sheets?

Yes! Thank you Google for this early Christmas gift.

Now we can create powerful Gantt charts natively, instead of the old way: a crazy-complicated cell grid with conditional formatting.

This will be a massive boon to us folks who plan and track projects with Google Sheets.

Availability

If you don't see this new chart in your Google Sheets yet, there are two potential reasons:

1. It hasn't reached your account yet, but will do soon!
2. Unfortunately, Timeline View is not available to users on personal Google Accounts.

Basic Timeline View

Let's see how to use these new chart views.

The key is to have data that is in the correct format for the timeline view tool.

At a minimum, you need three columns: 1) a task name column, 2) a start date column, and 3) an end date (or task duration) column.

To create a timeline view chart, highlight your data and select the menu:

Insert > Timeline

Check the correct range is selected and click "Ok".

Boom! You get a nice timeline view chart in a new sheet:

Advanced Timeline View

You can include additional descriptive columns, which can then be used for grouping and labeling in the timeline view.

You can also color code the task bars, which makes it much easier to see any grouping you apply. You can either individually color the bars from the Timeline View tool, or apply conditional formatting to the underlying data (as shown in the following table), which is carried through to the Timeline View.

Next, you highlight the data and Insert the Timeline View chart:

Under settings, you can change which columns to use for the grouping and color coding.

Also, you can control whether to view the project tasks daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

Clicking on a task will also bring up a sidebar with all the details.

This is a very nice addition to the Sheets toolkit!

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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. And it somehow works...​