Category: Spreadsheets

11 New Analytical Functions In Google Sheets For 2023

Coming hot on the heels of last year’s batch of new lambda functions, Google recently announced another group of new analytical functions for Sheets.

Included in this new batch are the long-awaited LET function, 8 new array manipulation functions, a new statistical function, and a new datetime function.

Let’s begin with a look at the new array functions. The LET function is at the end of the post.

  1. TOROW Function
  2. TOCOL Function
  3. CHOOSEROWS Function
  4. CHOOSECOLS Function
  5. WRAPROWS Function
  6. WRAPCOLS Function
  7. VSTACK Function
  8. HSTACK Function
  9. MARGINOFERROR Function
  10. EPOCHTODATE Function
  11. LET Function

Continue reading 11 New Analytical Functions In Google Sheets For 2023

How To Create A Google Sheets Drop-Down Menu

In this post, we’ll look at how to create a Google Sheets Drop-Down Menu. Here’s an example of a drop-down menu to record the status of deals in a real estate deal pipeline:

Google Sheets Drop-Down Chips

Drop-down menus are great for data entry and making your Sheets dynamic.

In this post, we’ll explore both of these techniques with examples.

But first, let’s see how to create a Google Sheets drop-down menu.

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XMATCH Function in Google Sheets

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Learn more about working with Lambda Functions, Named Functions, and X-Functions in the FREE Lambda Functions 10-Day Challenge course

The XMATCH function in Google Sheets is a new lookup function in Google Sheets that finds the relative position of a search term within an array or range. It’s an evolution of the original MATCH function.

Here’s a simple XMATCH function that finds the position of the search term “Cho Oyu” in the list of the highest mountains in the world:

=XMATCH(E2,A2:A15)

In the Sheet:

Xmatch Function Google Sheets Simple Example

And here’s how it works:

It looks for the search term from cell E2 (“Cho Oyu”) in the range A2:A15, then returns the position of the search text within this range. Note that the result is relative to the range, irrespective of the row number.

Xmatch Function Google Sheets Explainer

Notice how, unlike a regular MATCH function, you don’t have to specify the “0” search type for an exact match. It chooses the exact match, which is by far the most common use case, by default (in contrast to the MATCH function where you have to add the 0 to explicitly confirm exact matching). More on the search types below.

🔗 Get this example and others in the template at the bottom of this article.

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Google Sheets Advent Calendar

This year, I created a Google Sheets Advent Calendar, which you can see in action here:

Google Sheets Advent Calendar

It was a fun project with some interesting techniques, which are explored below.

You could easily modify it for your own example, or use these techniques in different scenarios.

Plus, if you’re too cheap to buy a physical advent calendar, this lets you enjoy the fun of opening a door each day to reveal something, but for free!
Continue reading Google Sheets Advent Calendar

Making Google Sheets look less like… Google Sheets

This is a guest post from Josh Cottrell-Schloemer.

Google Sheets is an incredibly powerful spreadsheet tool for pulling, processing, and presenting data. But many people don’t realize that you can also use it to build interactive dashboards.

With a bit of creativity we can go from this:

Dashboard Data Table in Google Sheets

To this:

Google Sheets Dashboard

The skills to build this type of dashboard aren’t difficult to learn and you can get started with a basic knowledge of Google Sheets.

Here’s a walkthrough of the dashboard shown above:


Continue reading Making Google Sheets look less like… Google Sheets