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How to Learn Google Sheets: Free Resources for Beginners

Learn Google Sheets with these free courses, ebooks, videos, and Google Chrome extensions. 

There’s a lot to love about Google Sheets.

Sheets is an incredibly powerful application, but the basics are easy to learn. Many people learn Google Sheets by simply jumping in and clicking around.

That approach works, but it’s better to follow a couple of simple lessons when starting out. You’ll establish efficient habits from the beginning. And you’ll actually gain spreadsheet mastery faster with instruction compared to clicking around.

There are dozens of premium courses to help you learn Google Sheets. But there are also several free tools to get you started. Here are a few of our favorites.

1 – Learn Google Sheets: The Official Google Learning Center

Go straight to the source for the best place to begin learning Google Sheets. The G Suite Learning Center for Sheets is remarkably easy to use. It’s designed for people new to spreadsheets, but also includes a learning path for people switching from Excel.

The presentation is boiled down to essentials – clean and simple. You begin by creating or importing a spreadsheet. You’re then guided all the way to sharing a sheet with a collaborator.

The G Suite Learning Center for Sheets includes tips and tricks, an FAQ, and a beautiful Cheat Sheet.

Visit The G Suite Learning Center for Sheets

2 – Learn Google Sheets; G Suite Training Chrome Extension

This free Chrome extension from Google provides simple, interactive training lessons to get you up and running fast. It puts interactive training and walkthroughs directly into Sheets and the rest of the G Suite (Gmail, Calendar, Slides, and Docs, etc). Learn as you go, for free.

Get G Suite Training for Chrome

3 – Free Getting Started With Google Sheets eBook from Zapier

This impressive free ebook can be browsed as an immersive website or downloaded as an ebook for your Kindle, iPad.

“Whether you’re a spreadsheet novice or an Excel veteran looking for a better way to collaborate, this book will help you get the most out of Google Sheets. We’ll start out with the basics in this chapter—then keep reading to learn Google Sheets’ advanced features, find its best add-ons, and learn how to build your own.”

Get Google Sheets 101: The Beginner’s Guide to Online Spreadsheets from Zapier

4 – “All the Google Sheets Formulas” from “Coding is for Losers”

The “Coding is for Losers” website is humorously described as “an elite group of data analysts, spreadsheet automators, statisticians, and all-around lazy people.” They believe “data is a language for driving action, not paralyzing it.” To that end, they offer a number of paid courses.

They also offer a great post titled “All the Google Sheets formulas you’ll ever need, in one tutorial.” It includes a cheat sheet along with wisdom like “Once I figured out how to use ARRAYFORMULA, I’ll never go back – because it’s an instrument of laziness.”

Check it out at Coding is for Losers

5 – Tiller Money Help Center

Each of Tiller’s Google sheets Templates includes extensive free video lessons and written documentation. While these materials assume a basic knowledge of spreadsheets, you can absorb some of the fundamental concepts of how to best use Google Sheets simply by following along.

Explore the Tiller Money Help Center. (And bookmark this blog, since we also often post Google Sheets tips and ideas here.)

6 – LinkedIn Learning

Did you know that LinkedIn has a substantial marketplace of instructional videos for learning business, tech, and creative skills? It currently shows 162 results for “Google Sheets.” These diverse courses range from 3 minutes to 3 hours in length.

A monthly subscription starts at $24.99, but you get a month free to try it out. It’s a good option if you want to follow some simple orientation lessons before jumping into a more robust program (for example, a course from Ben Collins, listed below).

View LinkedIn Learning

7 – Bonus: Advanced Formulas in Google Sheets from Ben Collins

Ben Collins is one of our favorite Google Sheets experts:

“Imagine if Yoda offered a free 30-day course designed to help you to upgrade your intermediate Force skills to full Jedi-mastery.  Replace the word “Force” with “Google Sheets,” and you’ll see why we’re so excited for Ben Collins’ FREE new “Advanced Formulas 30 Day Challenge” Course.”

While this course is intended for intermediate level users of Google Sheets, his blog is a goldmine of useful tips on using Sheets.

View Ben Collins’ Advanced Formulas 30 Day Challenge Course.

Edward Shepard

Edward Shepard

Marketing Lead at Tiller. Writer. Spreadsheet nerd. Get in touch with partnership ideas at edward @ tillerhq.com.

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