The best add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional

Google Sheets are one of the best resources to manage data. Whether it is for professional or personal use, this spreadsheet program makes keeping track of information convenient. Keeping tabs of office accounts, company budgets, contacts or candidates during a hiring process – what one can do on this program from Google is unlimited. Given that more people are going to access those office sheets, it is best to ensure that they are well-organised. We have listed some of the best add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional.

What are add-ons?

Before we get started, here are some basic information about add-ons. These are tools that can be installed so that they can be used to do specific functions. In other words, it is like adding extra options to your Google Sheets menubar in order to make doing tasks easy and fast. 

Add-ons are not just available on Google Sheets but also other Google programs like Slides, Gmail, Docs and more. Some add-ons help you to do tasks using more than one program. For instance, say you want to send customised season greetings to all your contacts. Then, there are add-ons that you can add to a sheet with all the contacts. Then use it to merge it with a Gmail draft containing your message. Please note that, in this article, we are only including add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional. 

Add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional

How to install add-ons?

To use an add-on, it must be installed first. One way to install is to click on the ‘Add-ons’ option on the menubar and choose the ‘Get add-ons’ option. This will open the Google Workspace Marketplace that has all the available add-ons. Select the one you want to use and install it. 

Another way is to click on the plus icon on the sidebar on the right side. The icon is under the pre-installed add-ons like Google Notes, Google Calendar and Google Tasks. After you press on the plus symbol, the Google Workspace Marketplace will open. From there, continue with the next steps mentioned above. 

Prior to installing, the add-on will ask for access permission. Press ‘Continue’ and it will ask you to choose a Google account. Once you select that, it will list all the functions that the add-on needs permission to do. Check them and press ‘Allow.’ 

Once installed, you will find the add-on under the Add-ons option in the menu bar.

Remove Duplicates

First in the list of add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional is Remove Duplicates. When you are working with a datasheet with a lot of data, it is hard to find if you entered anything twice by mistake. As the name suggests, this add-on helps you avoid that by deleting any duplicate cells or rows. 

Remove Duplicates checks for repetitions in the rows and columns you select. After detecting, it lets you delete, highlight or add the duplicate value to the original. You can choose from a list of functions and make the best-suited changes for your datasheet. This add-on also allows you to compare two different sheets on the same workbook. 

If you want to find the originals and not the duplicate, Remove Duplicates can do that too. 

Add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional
Image Courtesy: Remove Duplicates on Google Workspace Marketplace.

Table Styles

A sheet with the same font style and font size look neater than a spreadsheet using Arial in some rows and Times New Roman on others. In other words, Table Styles can be used for maintaining consistency in the spreadsheets. 

The add-on has pre-installed designs that you can use to highlight title rows, title columns or other select cells. You can also add new styles that can be implemented on your tables, When creating the new layout, you can add background colour, change font size, font colour, font style and do other formattings.

Yes, you can do all that using the already-existing functions on Google Sheets’ taskbar. However, all the aforementioned formatting can be done faster using Table Styles. For example, without the add-on, you should select the title row or column separately to add a background colour. While that is not that consuming, Table Styles come in handy when you have to have to format two or more spreadsheets in the same style.

Crop Sheet

Crop Sheet is a simple and efficient tool. Using the add-on is very straightforward. Once installed, it can be used to crop spreadsheets. That way you can get rid of all the empty cells. With Crop Sheet, you can either choose to ‘crop to data’ or ‘crop to selection.’ ‘Crop to data’ lets you keep all the cells containing any data. ‘Crop to selection’ crops off any unselected rows or columns even if they contain data.

Also, remember that the Crop Sheet only looks at the last column and last row from the selected range. If there are any extra empty rows or columns in between, they do not get removed. For that, you can use other add-ons like Remove Blank Rows.

Mapping Sheets

Similar to the way spreadsheets are used to store data, the programme is also used for analysing and presenting the data. The first few add-ons are used to format cells. Mapping Sheets, on the other hand, uses the data from the cells to create a map. 

Before generating a map, you should ensure that your sheet has headers and a column consisting of locations. To convert your data to a map, you have to select the title column, the filter column and the location column.

The title column is the column containing unique entries and appears as the title on the map. The filter column contains information that helps you categorise the title. The location column shows the location corresponding to each cell in the title column. 

Once you have selected all the columns, click on the ‘Build’ button. Mapping Sheets will run the data. After that, click on the ‘View’ button. Your map will open on a new tab. 

Add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional

Also see: 10 Free Excel Add-Ins Brings Visual Interest to Spreadsheets

More add-ons to make Google Sheets look professional

Power Tools 

Merge Values

Split Names

Lucidchart

Google Analytics

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