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Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #319, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

My wife and I took our two young sons on a backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail this weekend. We hiked in 4 miles on Saturday to a shelter, camped the night, and walked back the next day. It was a lot of fun and we made a lifetime memory on what would have been an otherwise regular weekend.

It was also a good reminder of that old adage "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Whilst my wife and I enjoyed the views and the sunrise (to which our boys were totally indifferent) they were fascinated by sticks, an upturned tree (their base), and all sorts of colorful mushrooms in the forest.

Wishing you a great week ahead!

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➜ News

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​Comments and action items are now available for client-side encrypted Google Sheets and Slides

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➜ Sheets Tip #319: Date Grouping in Pivot Tables

If I could only use one spreadsheet feature for the rest of my life, I might well choose Pivot Tables.

They're incredibly powerful for working with data.

They're the quickest and most flexible way to explore your data and discover real insights.

However, some of the most powerful features within pivot tables are hidden.

Today's tip uncovers one of these hidden superpowers!

Suppose we have a dataset with a date column. Perhaps sales dates, enrollment dates, publishing dates, etc.

We've created a pivot table to analyze our data, choosing the date column as the rows option:

This isn't particularly useful because it's too granular. It's hard to see if the sales are increasing, decreasing, or remaining steady on a daily basis.

What we really need to do is group the data into months to compare.

Let's try this: right click on any of the dates in the pivot table and choose "Create pivot date group:"

Choose a grouping level from the options. In our case, let's select "Year-Month" (although "Month" would also be fine because our data is all 2024).

And voila! There is it! Our data is now grouped into months for easy comparison:

➜ This week in Sheets Insiders

This week in the Sheets Insiders membership, I'm sharing a template that explores all the different options for interactive elements in your Sheets (buttons, checkboxes, slicers, etc.).

We'll explore 12 different User Interface (UI) techniques, from the basics through to clever outside-the-box techniques with formulas and Apps Script.

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

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. Funny prank on Dad​