Editing Collaboration and revision history Google Sheets serves as a
collaborative tool for cooperative editing of spreadsheets in real time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously and users can see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. Changes are automatically saved to Google's servers and a revision history is automatically kept so past edits may be viewed and reverted to. An editor's current position is represented with an editor-specific color/cursor, so if another editor happens to be viewing that part of the document they can see edits as they occur. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document, with each author distinguished by color. Only adjacent revisions can be compared and users cannot control how frequently revisions are saved. Files can be exported to a user's local computer in a variety of formats such as
PDF and
Office Open XML. Sheets supports tagging for archival and organizational purposes.
Explore Launched for the entire Drive suite in September 2016, "Explore" enables additional functionality through
machine learning. In Google Sheets, Explore enables users to ask questions, such as "How many units were sold on Black Friday?" and Explore will return the answer, without requiring formula knowledge from the user. In June 2017, Google expanded the Explore feature in Google Sheets to automatically build charts and visualize data and again expanded it in December to feature machine learning capable of automatically creating pivot tables. In October 2016, Google announced the addition of "Action items" to Sheets. If a user assigns a task within a Sheet, the service will intelligently assign that action to the designated user. Google states this will make it easier for other collaborators to visualize who is responsible for a task. When a user visits Google Drive or Sheets, any files containing tasks assigned to them will be highlighted with a badge. In March 2014, Google introduced add-ons; new tools from third-party developers that add more features for Google Sheets.
Gemini Since late 2025,
Gemini has been integrated into Google Sheets, allowing for creation of tables, formulas, generate data analysis and insights, building charts and graphs, summarizing emails and files from Drive and Gmail as well as performing actions like applying conditional formatting, creating pivot tables, adding a dropdown or checkbox, sorting, applying, or clearing a filter, finding and replacing text, setting a number format, inserting, deleting, or freezing rows and columns, filling a range and formatting a table, all with the help of the
LLM tool.
Offline editing To view and edit spreadsheets offline on a computer, users need to be using the
Chromium-based web browser (e.g.,
Google Chrome,
Microsoft Edge). A
Chrome extension,
Google Docs Offline, allows users to enable offline support for Sheets and other Drive suite files on the Google Drive website. The Android and iOS apps natively support offline editing.
Files Supported file formats and limits Files in the following formats can be viewed and converted to the Sheets format: .xls (if newer than
Microsoft Office 95), .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlt, .xltx, .xltm .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt and .tab. Overall document size is capped at 10 million cells.
Google Workspace The Sheets app and the rest of the
Google Docs Editors suite are free to use for individuals, but Sheets is also available as part of the business-centered
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) service by Google, which is a monthly subscription that enables additional business-focused functionality.
Integration with Charts and Wikipedia Sheets can produce
Google Charts and has a third-party plugin which allows for integration with Wikipedia.
Other functionality A simple find and replace tool is available. The service includes a web clipboard tool that allows users to copy and paste content between Google Sheets and Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings. The web clipboard can also be used for copying and pasting content between different computers. Copied items are stored on Google's servers for up to 30 days. Google offers an extension for the Google Chrome web browser called
Office editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides that enables users to view and edit Microsoft Excel documents on Google Chrome, via the Google Sheets app. The extension can be used for opening Excel files stored on the computer using Chrome, as well as for opening files encountered on the web (in the form of email attachments, web search results, etc.) without having to download them. The extension is installed on
ChromeOS by default. As of June 2019, this extension is no longer required since the functionality exists natively.
Google Cloud Connect was a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 that could automatically store and synchronize any Excel document to Google Sheets (before the introduction of Drive). The online copy was automatically updated each time the Microsoft Excel document was saved. Microsoft Excel documents could be edited offline and synchronized later when online. Google Cloud Connect maintained previous Microsoft Excel document versions and allowed multiple users to collaborate by working on the same document at the same time. However, Google Cloud Connect has been discontinued as of April 30, 2013, as, according to Google, Google Drive achieves all of the above tasks, "with better results". While Microsoft Excel retains the 1900
leap year bug, Google Sheets 'fixes' this bug by increasing the number code for all dates before March 1, 1900, so entering "0" and formatting it as a date returns December 30, 1899. On the other hand, Excel interprets "0" as meaning December 31, 1899, which is formatted to read January 0, 1900. Launched in December 2022, Simple ML is Google's add-on for
machine learning. == See also ==