Filter your data in spreadsheets

Collecting information is often much easier than analyzing or understanding it, especially for large information in large spreadsheets. One common challenge is that it’s hard to drill down into the data you want to find quickly.

Today we are making it easier to analyze and view your data with the addition of filtering in Google spreadsheets. Adding a filter onto a set of data can help you quickly narrow down the data set to find the data you need. By selecting a data set, you can filter and sort amongst many rows at once.

Let’s say you started with a list of wines that your friends like and you wanted to sift through and find the wines from 2006 that Peter and Phil like.


To filter your data set, first select the information you want to filter. If you click on one cell within a large set of data, it will expand to select other cells in that range.

Ranges that are part of the filtered data set will have both the column and row labels colored green.


Once you’ve selected your data set, clicking on the drop down icon in the header rows will give a set of filter options. Here, you can change sorting, select specific filters, search and perform bulk actions.


Search speeds up filtering for large data sets. For example, typing P will shorten the list to just the names that start with P. You can also Select all or Clear to perform bulk actions on the visible items. For example clicking clear below would de-select Peter and Phil.


The icon in the header row will change to a filter to denote the columns that have a filter applied to them. The filter toolbar icon will also change to green if a filter has been applied to any column. Finding all the wines from 2006 that Peter and Phil liked now takes seconds.


Note that filtering and sorting are both applied immediately for all collaborators and per person filtering isn’t available at this time. To turn off filtering, just click on the filter icon.

This is another highly requested feature that we’re happy to make available to everyone. We’re looking forward to your feedback on how we can improve it.

Multiple chart ranges and hidden sheets in Spreadsheets

Having control over what you can graph and which sheets you can see at any given time is important. Today we added the ability to chart multiple ranges and hide sheets in Google spreadsheets.

Chart Multiple Ranges
In charts, you are now able to graph multiple ranges. Take this chart depicting time vs distanced traveled.

You can now add extra ranges by clicking on “Select ranges...” and “add another range.” You can also manually add new ranges separated by commas like “Charts!B5:B12, Charts!D5:D12, Charts!F5:F12.”

In this example, here is what the chart with the above data selected looks like.


Hidden Sheets
We’re also introducing the ability to hide your sheets. You can click on a sheet tab and select “hide sheet” to remove a sheet from view.

The sheet can still be seen in the list of sheets and any editor can click on this sheet to bring this back to view. Sheets can also be accessed from the Hidden sheets option in the View menu. Learn more about sheet hiding here.


We hope you enjoy these features, let us know what you think in the forums.

Template updated: 2011 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

For all you serious basketball fans out there or for those that just want to follow along, the 2011 College Basketball Tournament Bracket template is a great way to share your picks with your friends.


Other Google teams are getting into the basketball spirit. From getting Realtime updates to exploring 3D venues on Google Maps, there is something for every basketball fan at google.com/collegebasketball2011.

What’s new in Docs: Mobile editing in 45 languages, printing in spreadsheets

Last year, we launched mobile editing in English and more page sizes in Google documents. We’re excited to announce that we’ve expanded on both of these features this week by adding 44 more mobile editing languages and more print sizes to Google spreadsheets.

Mobile editing now in 45 languages
You can now edit your documents on the go in 45 languages on Android with Froyo (version 2.2) and on iOS devices (version 3.0+) including the iPad. Learn more at mobile.google.com/docs.



More print sizes
Following in the footsteps of last week’s hide gridlines update, there are now eight more print sizes in Google spreadsheets, including tabloid, statement, executive, folio and A3, A5, B4 and B5.


As always, feedback in the comments and on the forums is appreciated.

This week in Docs: Now you see them, now you don’t - hidden gridlines in Google spreadsheets

Today we’re excited to announce a highly requested feature to hide the default gridlines. Under the View menu, you can Hide gridlines for each sheet, leaving only the borders that have been put there.




Now you can make your printouts a little bit neater or polish your sheets to a shine before sharing them. Let us know what you think in the comments.

More “I do"s, less “to-do"s: wedding planning simplified



Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Photos Blog

For many, your wedding day is one of the biggest, most momentous days of your life. The perfect dress, the right tuxedo, the proper shade of blue, the three-tier cake with chocolate fondant, and all of your closest family and friends—these are just a few of the many things you might think about for your special day. Although there’s much to consider and a lot of work to do, the payoff is great: it’s one of the happiest days of your life.

To help you plan this important day we’ve created wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik, and gathered tips and tricks for using these and other Google products at google.com/weddings. From wedding websites to save-the-date cards, these tools simplify wedding planning, letting you focus your time on the fun things—like tasting cakes!


We teamed up with renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago, who provided her insight and creativity to guide the designs you’ll find on this new site. Michelle also shared her experience to provide tips and advice to keep your guests comfortable and you sane.


We’re also hosting a wedding sweepstakes, so if you’re getting married in the next year you can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, Michelle Rago and her team will advise the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design elements to create a day that is uniquely their own. (Update March 29, 2011: The Google Dream Wedding Sweepstakes is closed and is no longer taking entries. Thanks for your interest.)

Visit google.com/weddings to start planning, or share the site with your favorite betrothed couple and help them on their way to wedded bliss.

Our favorite Docs things - 2010 Year in Review

We’ve been keeping busy this year with over 85 new enhancements to Google Docs and Google Sites, making it possible for you to work, communicate and collaborate entirely in the cloud. We wanted to take a moment to share a few of the most exciting enhancements from 2010 that are making it easier for you to go “100% web.”

In addition to some of the most requested favorite features like mobile editing, OCR, advanced sorting rules and a more consistent look, here are more of our team’s favorite things from this last year:
We look forward to bringing you more improvements next year. Let us know what is at the top of your Google Docs and Sites wish list in the comments.

On behalf of the entire the Google Docs and Google Sites teams, happy holidays! We’ll see you in the New Year!

This week in Docs: Revision history in spreadsheets

Today we’re excited to announce that the new revision history view we added to documents is now available in spreadsheets. At a glance, you can now see all of the changes that collaborators have made cell-by-cell. Each collaborator is represented by a different color so it is easy to understand who made what changes.



Changes made by collaborators are grouped into batches. To expand these batches, select “Show more detailed revisions.”

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Tips & Tricks: More options for mobile editing on the the iPad

A couple weeks ago, we made is possible to edit your documents on many popular mobile phones and on the iPad.

The new mobile editor is fast and lightweight, but sometimes you want to make more style edits like changing a font, or center aligning a paragraph. If you’re on an iPad, you can do that by visiting the Desktop version of the document editor.


If you want to insert formulas in a Google spreadsheet from your iPad, you can use the same trick. Just click Go to spreadsheet view at the top of the mobile view to try out the full version of Google spreadsheets. You can now insert formulas in from the editable formula bar.


Of course, mobile and even tablet browsers are still not as powerful as their desktop counterparts, which is why we recently launched the mobile-optimized version of the Google documents editor for the iPad.

But we figured for one-off times when you need to make an advanced change, that Desktop link might be just what you’re looking for.

Your feedback makes a difference: Product Ideas

Many of you have visited our Product Ideas page to let us know what features you’d like to see in Google Docs or what you think we’re missing. Your participation was astounding: we received over 165,000 votes on over 5,000 ideas from thousands of people around the world over the course of a year. Here are just a few of the things we launched in the last year that accomplish many of the things you’ve been asking for:
We’re starting a new process with the Product Ideas page to make sure we keep it fresh and avoid favoring older posts. We’ve temporarily closed the page to new posts to gather a comprehensive look at your ideas thus far and to restructure our Product Ideas sessions.

In order to get the most precise feedback possible, the new Product Ideas sessions will be targeted at a specific feature, product or idea. These sessions will happen every three months or so for a few weeks at a time. As we receive new ideas on the Product Ideas page, we’ll keep working hard to implement the top requests and ideas that are posted. We’ll let you all know when the ideas page is open and post ongoing updates here on the blog and in the help forum.