Sheets Insiders 28: Roadmap, learning pathways, and CHOOSECOLS trick

Welcome to issue 28 of the Sheets Insiders membership.

You can see the full archives here.

In this issue, we’re covering:

  • Membership roadmap
  • Learning pathways
  • A delightful Google Sheets tip

§1 Sheets Insiders Roadmap

I launched the Sheets Insiders membership slightly over 6 months ago so this is a good time to take stock of where we are and where we’re going. A roadmap if you will.

Initially, SI was envisaged as a paid newsletter. An upgrade to the regular Monday Google Sheets tips newsletter.

But it’s become much more than that.

Between regular video tutorials, a focus on AI, and live workshops, it’s outgrown the initial vision.

It’s clear that a newsletter alone is not the right platform to host the membership.

So, what is?

I want Sheets Insiders to be your one-stop-learning-and-solutions-hub for all things Google Sheets, automation, and AI.

To achieve that, we’ll be moving onto a dedicated learning platform in the coming months.

There, I can organize the content around learning pathways (think courses on specific topics), integrate live workshops, share latest releases in the Sheets world, build a library of example workflows, and add a forum for Q&A.

For example, if you want to improve your data visualization skills, then you’ll find a dedicated data visualization learning pathway. A series of guided lessons and templates, from beginner to advanced, at your disposal.

Layer on live workshops and a forum to ask questions, and you’ll have everything you need to master this topic.

And, since AI is rapidly changing how we work, I’ll be building out a library of Google Sheets & AI workflows for you to use.

Additionally, the membership will have a regularly updated section dedicated to new releases so that you never miss a beat. We saw a glimpse of this in Issue 11 of Sheets Insiders, which featured a roundup of all the 2024 releases.

Finally, I’ll still send this weekly members-only newsletter every Thursday, but it’ll evolve to best support you in getting the most of your membership.

Timeline

The plan is to get the new membership home up and running by the summer, in the next couple of months.

§2 Learning Pathways

These are all our Sheets Insiders tutorials to date organized into learning pathways.

Think of these as mini-courses to master a specific topic, and a peek into how I’ll be organizing content going forward.

Foundational Skills

Data Visualization

AI Workflow Examples

Automation Workflows with Apps Script

Formulas

Better Ways to Use Sheets

§3 A Google Sheets Tip to delight you

I didn’t want to leave you without a Google Sheets tidbit to savor, so here you go…

​CHOOSECOLS and CHOOSEROWS are functions that let you select columns or rows from a range by number.

For example:

=CHOOSECOLS(A1:E11,2,3)

selects the 2nd and 3rd columns from the range A1:E11.

But we can also specify negative numbers!

For example:

=CHOOSECOLS(A1:E11,-1)

which grabs the last column of the data range (the first column starting from the right), indicated by the -1.

Mind blown! 🤯

This is incredibly useful if you have huge datasets where it’s easier to count in from the right side.

You can even combine positive and negative numbers.

E.g. this formula:

=CHOOSECOLS(A1:E11,2,-2,-1)

grabs the second column, the second-to-last column, and the last column.

Suppose we have this dataset:

Then the formula above gives this output:

This negative number trick works with CHOOSEROWS as well.