Stop 02 · Excel & SpreadsheetsTopics · 8/10

Google Sheets Essentials

In short

Many startups run entirely on Google Sheets. It's free, lives in the browser and lets five people edit at once without emailing 'final_v3.xlsx' around.

Most Excel skills transfer directly, but Sheets adds real-time collaboration, easy sharing, and native integrations (Forms, Apps Script) that make it the default in many startups.

The jaadu and two colourful friends all write in one big shared notebook.

Think of it like this

The shared group project notebook

Instead of each friend writing their part at home and stapling pages later, everyone writes in one notebook on the same table. You see each other's edits as they happen. Google Sheets is that notebook, online, with a history of who wrote what.

Watch it happen

Three people, one sheet

Aman

Google Sheet

Neha

Google Form

new response row

1/5A Google Form drops each survey answer straight into a new row.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Real-time collaboration

Many people edit at once, with comments and @mentions. No more emailing file versions.

Version history

File > Version history shows every change and lets you restore an older version.

QUERY is SQL-lite

QUERY lets you write SQL-like statements on a sheet range. Great practice before real SQL.

IMPORTRANGE and Forms

Pull data from another sheet with IMPORTRANGE, and collect data straight from Google Forms.

See it in code

Walk through the code

excel

1=QUERY(A1:D500, "select B, sum(D) where C = 'Paid' group by B order by sum(D) desc", 1)2 3=IMPORTRANGE("<sheet URL>", "Orders!A1:D500")4 5=ARRAYFORMULA(IF(D2:D="", "", D2:D*0.18))

1/3Group by city (B), sum the amount (D), only paid orders, biggest first. The 1 means one header row.

QUERY gives total paid amount per city. IMPORTRANGE pulls from another file. ARRAYFORMULA fills a whole column with one formula.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Sharing a sheet as 'Anyone with the link can edit'.

Do this instead

Share with specific people, and give 'Viewer' or 'Commenter' unless they truly need to edit.

Oops

Assuming every Excel feature works the same in Sheets.

Do this instead

Most formulas match, but macros and some Power Query features don't. Check before you promise.

Your mission

A form-fed survey sheet

~30 min

Quick check

A teammate accidentally clears half your sheet. What's the quickest fix?

Go deeper

1Recreate one of your Excel exercises in Google Sheets and note the differences.
2Learn the Sheets-specific functions: QUERY, IMPORTRANGE, and ARRAYFORMULA.
3Try a simple Google Apps Script automation (even just recording macros conceptually).