Google Sheets Beginner Course 2 | The most common Shortcuts & Formulas

Most common Keyboard Shortcuts and Formulas


 Though it’s often said there’re many productivity hacks that will make manipulating your spredsheet faster and easier, it’d be enough first to make youreslf familiar with the most handy and practical keyboard shortcuts, and formulas. By learning a few simple methods, you can speed up your workflow and save your valuable time.

1. the most important Google Sheets shortcuts

  1.  Copy and Paste

  2.  Click and drag your mouse over the cells you want to copy to highlight them. Then, single-click on the top cell where you’d like to paste and press Ctrl + V.

     Copy: Windows Ctrl + C  |  Mac  + C

     Paste: Windows Ctrl + V  |  Mac  + V

  3.  Paste values only

  4.  It will paste the values only of the copied range without formulas and formatting like a color, cell borders, and allow users to obtain just the numers or letters.

    Windows (PC) Ctrl + Shift + V | Mac + Shift + V

  5.  Undo

  6.  Sheets undo feature allows us cancel previous actions. You can step back in time and fix any accidental changes or deletion that you didn’t intend for.

      Windows Ctrl + Z  | Mac + Z

  7.  Redo

  8.  It allows you to repeat the last action. It’s handy particularly when you repeat the action that requres clicking a icon in the toolbar each time. For example, you need to click the Merge icon for each uniting cells by default. But, once after you’ve done this, you can repeat it just by pressing Ctrl + Y or F4.

      Windows Ctrl + Y or F4 | Mac + Y or F4 + fn

    Tip: If you prefer to use the mouse, click “Undo and Redo buttons” on the standard toolbar. However, you may soon realize it’s often way easier to use the shortcut keys instead of grabbing a mouse and moving around in a spreadsheet.

  9.  Skip to edges

  10.  You can jump to the end of a row or column, holding Ctrl and pressing one of the four arrow keys. It instantly takes you to the edges of a large dataset or lengthy list without scrolling all through it. It’s easy, but extremely powerful.

    Windows Ctrl +

    Mac   +


  11.  Select all (and delete all)

  12.  It’s helpful especially when you want to cut or copy all at once.

      Windows Ctrl + A  | Mac + A

  13.  Select a range manually

  14.  Sometimes, using a mouse actually slows you down and in this case, it most likely does. When you have a range to copy, you would click the top-left cell in the range and click and hold down the left mouse button and drag to the lower rightmost cell in the range. However, it often lets you mistakenly drag over the range, you end up fixing it by dragging the mouse back again. Shift + arrow keys, on the other hand, makes you do this more precisely.

      Windows & Mac Shift +

  15.  Activate the cell for editing at the end of the cell contents

  16.  F2 can be one of the most practical keys in Sheets. It helps you quickly and easily edit the data of a cell by leading to Sheets edit mode without clicking the cell.

      Windows F2  | Mac F2+ fn

  17.  Move to the next line in a cell

  18.   Windows Ctrl or Alt + Enter  | Mac  or Ctrl+ Enter

  19.  Insert the current date in a cell

  20.  Instead of the shortcut, the formula “= TODAY()” also returns the current date.

      Windows Ctrl + ;  | Mac + ;


    2. the most basic Google Sheets formulas

    1.  SUM

    2.  “= SUM (B2:B8)” is to sum up the multiple cells within the range from B2 to B8. In selecting the range, the shortcut key No. 7 “Select a range manually” lets you do this more easily and accurately. If you simply want to add up a few numbers, you can use the SUM function or arithmetic operator as below. Both would return 1500.00.

      = SUM (250, 250, 1000) | = 250+250+1000 
      Tip: You can also find the functions among standard instruments on the toolbar


    3.  AVERAGE

    4.   The function evaluates a set of values in the range and gives you the average of all the numbers in B2:B8, omitting the text.


    5.  MAX & MIN

    6.   While MAX is to return the maximum number in the range, MIN is to give you the minimum.


    7.  COUNT & COUNTA

    8.   While COUNT only counts numerical cells in the range, COUNTA takes all cells with contents into account, whether numbers or not.


    9.  IF

    10.   SyntaxIF(logical_expression, value_if_true, value_if_false)

      logical_expression : An expression or reference to a cell containing an expression that represents some logical value like TRUE or FALSE.
      value_if_true : The value the function returns if logical_expression is TRUE. In this example, “sell”.
      value_if_false (blank by default) : The value the function returns if logical_expression is FALSE. In this example, “hold”.

      =IF(B2>1200,“sell”,“hold”)