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Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #341, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

Hope you're out enjoying the beautiful Spring weather 🌱🌼 if you're in the Northern Hemisphere. And Fall if you're down south!

➜ News

I.
​In case you missed it earlier in the month, I've now put the replay from the live Lambda Functions website on YouTube.

Watch "Unlocking the Secrets of Lambda Functions" and grab the template for free here:

​

II.​
My friend, and fellow Google Sheets developer, Andrew Kamphey, has created a collection of "harmless but mind-boggling automations" for April Fools Day tomorrow!

​Check out Sheet Fools >>​

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➜ Sheets Tip #341: A, B, C, D,E - Letter Lists with Clever Formulas

In this tip, we look at how to create lists of letters in our Sheets.

Perhaps you have a series of tasks that you want to label as Step A, Step B, Step C, etc. How can we do that in Google Sheets?

Firstly, let's try to do it as simply as possible with autofilll.

Type A in row 1 and B in row 2. If you try to drag it down, this is what happens:

Whoops!

It just repeats A and B.

Same thing happens if you do it with "Step A" and "Step B".

However, we can use a special property of how letters are encoded (or stored) on the computer.

Each letter is represented by an ASCII code. For example, letter A is represented by 065. Letter B by 066. And so on.

Method 1: CODE + CHAR

There are two handy functions in Google Sheets to convert letters to ASCII and back again. The CODE function:

gives the value 65. And the CHAR function​

gives the value "A".

Knowing this, we can now create a formula to generate a list of letters for us.

Start with "A" in cell A1.

In cell A2, type this formula:

Drag down to create the other letters!

Here's an alternative method using the mighty SEQUENCE function.

Method 2: SEQUENCE + CHAR

This formula generates a list of numbers starting at 65:

Wrap this with a CHAR function and the ArrayFormula to convert these numbers to letters:

This can be easily modified to turn the list into a "Step" format, e.g. Step A, Step B, Step C, etc.

Modify the formula to this:

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

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. Shape sorter tears 😭​