How To Add Columns in Google Sheets

How to add columns in google sheets, in 7 different ways.

How To Add Columns in Google Sheets on YouTube

→ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmGDMNdDhHc

Transcript:

(00:00) You might know how to add a column to a Google sheet, but you might not. All the ways to add columns to Google Sheets. And why do we want to know all of the ways? One of the reasons we do is because it allows us to explore different, uh, functionalities that exist within Google Sheets. Uh, knowing one way to add a column in a Google sheet is really okay.
(00:20) And, but it might slow you down in certain contexts. So you might know one way or two ways, or three ways, but you might not know all the ways. And just knowing all the ways and seeing all the ways to add columns will allow you to go faster. And better. So right away, and also I have found that sometimes it's not as intuitive as it seems like Google Sheets.
(00:40) Sometimes you have to experience it to learn it. And if we never experience something or experience a menu, we might never know that, oh, that exists there. Uh, for whatever reason. Like for instance, you might be selecting a column that you want to, a, insert an image, uh, insert a column to and go up to insert.
(00:58) To me, that might seem the most. Influe influential? No. In intuitive way to add a column, because here's the word insert, and you go to insert columns and you can insert a column to left or you can insert a column to the right. But you can also do that if you select the column and you have this hand arrow and you select the entire column by clicking on the, the, uh, column header here, not the, not the first row, but the whole entire column.
(01:27) And on a Mac I use the control button, uh, on. Windows you might use command or, um, some other, um, right click any. And also if you have a mouse, you right click and we, I'm gonna hit control and the keyboard and click there. And here we have insert column left and insert column, right? And so this allows us to stay within, inside the sheet and insert the column.
(01:53) But you might not know as well. You might always think, oh, I have to select the entire column to insert a column. But you can actually be on any row. We can even go down to like row 247 and right click here and we can insert column left. That's interesting, right? We can't insert a column, right? But we can't insert a column left.
(02:12) We can go over here. Insert column left. Very weird. Right now there are five way. That's five ways to add a. Well, let me share with you a couple more ways. One is not just adding one column, but we can actually add multiple columns if we select that number of columns we want to add. So say we want to add like three columns here, we can go and select C, D, and E.
(02:37) And then we right click, and now our option here is not to add a column, but add three columns to the left or three columns to the right. This is very unintuitive, right? We wouldn't necessarily know that this exists unless we actually went and highlighted that many rows. Here's, uh, rose columns, five columns, highlighting them, and now I can insert five columns to the left or five columns to the right.
(02:59) Pretty cool, right? That's two more ways to add columns. Now, here's one thing that you might miss because you actually can't do it. If you say, okay, I have, uh, naturally on a sheet we have A to Z and we'll just go and delete those columns there. So we have A to Z on every new sheet that's, uh, 26 columns.
(03:18) If we scroll to the left over here and we click this area right between a and one, we select the entire sheet, this entire tab, and then if we right click now, we can do. 26 columns to lift. We cannot insert 26 columns to the right. But what's interesting too is if we stay on this, uh, in this area, one a one between a one, this sort of, uh, little square here, or cell, now we right click on it and we cannot add a column.
(03:48) We can only insert rows above and below. Now isn't this interesting? They actually don't let you add the columns over here. We would have to first select everything and then go anywhere else and right click insert 26 columns to the left. We might want to though. Insert them to the right. So we select everything here and let's see if we just select anything, everything by hand, which is the same outcome, right? You think, but no, we have the, we can right click here and now we have 26 columns to left and 26 columns to the right.
(04:18) So it's, it's very unintuitive that the fact that if you click. The entire sheet here and right click. Now we have that option, right? Okay, let's unselect everything and now click it again. We do not have that option to add columns anymore, only rows. So it gets a little counterintuitive sometimes when you're trying to do something, but don't fret.
(04:38) There's always multiple ways to do the same thing. Now that you got that quick tip. Watch right here, the next video. Out on better sheet's YouTube channel right here on YouTube by.