Sheets Tip 320: Bet you didn't know you could do this with pivot tables...


Brought to you by:


Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #320, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

I'm currently experimenting with Google Gemini and ChatGPT to write my Google Sheets formulas and do data analysis. They do a much better job now than they did even just 6 months ago. The way we work with spreadsheets will change fundamentally in the next couple of years.

I'll share results from these experiments with Sheets Insiders members in Thursday's email.

Meanwhile, in today's Google Sheets Tips email, I have another amazing pivot table trick for you. Like last week, it's not well known because it's hidden in the right-click menu.

Check it out below!


Brought to you by: Kirksville Web Design

Premium Google Sites Templates

50+ awesome templates available for business websites, online portfolios and resumes. Google Sites is a no-code site builder with free hosting in Google Drive. Drag and drop your content into professionally designed themes, connect your own domain and hit publish.

To date we’ve had 25,076 downloads of the templates on our marketplace! Here’s why you should consider Google Sites:

  • Responsive fast-loading themes
  • Google’s easy site builder
  • Run your website free forever

➜ News

I.
Google is adding third-party smart chips to Sheets, over the coming weeks.

These are smart chips that pull information from third-party apps into Google Sheets. It's all about reducing the distance ( = friction) between your work apps.

As a user of Loom, I'm excited to use a Loom smart chip in my Google Sheet.

Read more here >>


➜ Sheets Tip #320:

Following last week's tip, when we looked at date grouping in pivot tables, I want to show you another hidden grouping technique in pivot tables.

It's incredibly useful. And it's easy to use.

Let's start with a pivot table that has text values in the rows, e.g. client names, sales campaigns, exam topics, or, in our example, city names:

What if we want to group them into east and west coast buckets? (Perhaps we have two different sales teams.)

Step 1

Click on the first city in the group, e.g. Boston.

Hold down the Ctrl key (or Cmd on a Mac) and click the other east coast cities: Miami, New York, and Washington, DC

This highlights all these cities together.

Step 2

Right click, making sure to keep our cursor over one of the 4 cities we've selected, and select "Create pivot group":

This will group the 4 cities into a single custom group

Step 3

Click on the new group subhead and type in "East Coast" to rename it:

which then looks like this:

Step 4

Highlight the other rows and repeat the steps to create a second custom group for West Coast:

Over to you... Get creative with your custom grouping!


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

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. What it feels like trying to get together with friends when you all have young families ;)

Google Sheets Tips

Get better at working with Google Sheets! Join 50,000 readers to get an actionable tip in your inbox every Monday.

Read more from Google Sheets Tips

Brought to you by: Hi Reader, Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #336, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form! This week, we're looking at use cases for the text rotation tool. I don't use it often but it's a nice technique for styling your Sheets. I've used it to add branding to my Sheets (see use case 2 below). Find tip #336 below our sponsor message and a few articles to share from the spreadsheet world. Brought to you by: BudgetSheet Save Time This Tax Season With...

Brought to you by: Hi Reader, Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #335, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form! Today, I'm sharing some formulas that I use all the time: date formulas. I do a lot of project management planning in Sheets so I'm always needing to generate sequences of dates. Below, you'll find a roundup of the most useful. But first, I'm delighted to share today's sponsor with you. If you're serious about working with data then learning how to code with the...

A map of data hosted in Google Sheets

Brought to you by: Hi Reader, Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #334, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form! I don't know about you but I LOVE MAPS. It might be because my hobbies—cycling, hiking, climbing—mostly revolve around backcountry travel, of which maps are an intrinsic part of the game. From as early as I can remember, I've had an affinity for maps. So, I'm excited to share today's tip. It marries my professional work and personal use cases for Google tools....