- Spreadsheet Basics
- Creating Your First Google Docs Spreadsheet
- Creating a New Spreadsheet from a Template
- Formatting a Spreadsheet
- Working with Data
- Printing and Deleting Spreadsheets
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Creating a New Spreadsheet from a Template
Although you can custom-design your own spreadsheet from scratch, Google also gives you the option of using a template as a basis for a new spreadsheet. A template is a sample spreadsheet already set up for a particular purpose. For example, if you want to create a spreadsheet to plan and track your family's monthly budget, you don't have to start from square one: Choose a budget planner from Google's available template to create your own budget-planning spreadsheet. You can use the template as it is or tweak it to suit your own needs.
Using a template as the basis for a new spreadsheet can save you a lot of work, so let's see just how easy it can be. When you create a new spreadsheet from a template, you take one of these routes, depending on your starting point:
- From the Google Docs home page—Click New, From Template to open Google's Template Gallery. There, click the Spreadsheets tab.
- From the spreadsheet editor—Click File, New, From Template. The Template Gallery opens with the Spreadsheets tab already selected.
Figure 6.3 shows the Spreadsheets tab of Google's Template Gallery, which has tons of templates, ranging from amortization schedules and teacher grade books to invoices and a checklist for planning your wedding. You find and select a spreadsheet from this library in the same way you'd use a template to create a new word-processing document (described in Chapter 3, "Formatting Documents"). To find a template, use the search box at the top of the page or browse a category from the list on the left. To find a family budget template, for example, you might search for budget or browse the Personal Finance category.
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Figure 6.3 Google's Templates Gallery may have just the spreadsheet design you're looking for.
To get a close-up look of a template before you use it, click the Preview link; the template opens in a new window. To create your own spreadsheet from the template, click its Use This Template button, either from the list of templates or from the preview page of the template you want. Google opens the template in your spreadsheet editor—ready for you to start entering data—and adds it to your Docs list.