Utah Community Learning

Excel or Google Sheets, and why I keep hitting the wrong shortcut

Okay sooo. Before we go any further, we need to talk about which program you're actually going to use, because I don't want you building your first sheet and then getting stuck on something dumb like "where's the save button."

Real talk, it mostly doesn't matter. Excel and Google Sheets do about 90% of the same stuff. For everyday use, budgets, trackers, sign-up sheets, the differences are small enough that I'm not going to pretend one is dramatically better. Here's how I actually think about picking:

Use Google Sheets if: - You want it free and you already have a Google account - More than one person needs to look at or edit it (sharing is way easier) - You mostly work from different devices, like your phone and a laptop that aren't the same one every time

Use Excel if: - You already have Microsoft 365 through work or school - You're doing bigger, more complex stuff eventually, pivot tables, big datasets (more on my own limits there later in the course) - You want it to work fine with no wifi

For most of what we're doing in this course, either one is fine. If you don't already have a strong opinion, I'd say start with Google Sheets because it's free and you can open it right now in a browser tab. That's it, that's the whole decision. Don't overthink it.

Now, about those shortcuts

Not gonna lie, I use both programs depending on the week, work stuff in one, home budget in the other, and my hands do not care which one I'm in. I will confidently hit Ctrl+something in Google Sheets that does absolutely nothing, or worse, does the wrong thing, because it's an Excel shortcut. Then I sit there for a second like, why didn't that work. It's a little embarrassing to admit as "the spreadsheet lady" but it's just true.

So when I'm demoing something in class, I'll tell you which program I'm in, and if I blank on a shortcut, I'll just say so instead of pretending I meant to click around the long way. That's honestly the more useful skill anyway: knowing how to find the thing when your fingers forget.

A quick, humbling story

I tried to teach my husband Casey how to sort a table once. Simple thing, right, click sort, done. He clicked the little arrow, but only selected one column instead of the whole table, and hit sort. Every row scrambled. Names next to the wrong numbers, dates that didn't match anything anymore. He looked at me like the computer had betrayed him personally.

I fixed it in about ten seconds, undo, then sort the whole range properly. But he still brings it up, months later, like it was somehow my fault for existing in the room when it happened.

Here's the actual lesson in that, though: sorting only what you've selected, instead of the whole table, is probably the single most common way people accidentally wreck a sheet. It doesn't delete anything. It just shuffles rows so they don't line up anymore, which is almost worse because it LOOKS fine at first glance.

The fix, in both programs: before you sort, either select the entire range of data (not just one column), or use "Sort range" and make sure the box for "expand the selection" or "include all columns" is checked. In Google Sheets specifically, if you right-click and choose sort, it'll usually ask you. Read that little prompt. I know, nobody reads prompts. Read that one.

If you do scramble it, don't panic. Undo (Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z) usually saves you completely, as long as you catch it fast and haven't done ten other things since.

Practical steps for today

Pick one program. If you're not sure, open Google Sheets in a browser tab right now.
Make a blank sheet and just type five rows of fake data into two columns, anything, names and numbers.
Select only column A and try sorting it. Watch it scramble against column B.
Undo it.
Now select both columns together and sort again. Notice it stays lined up.

That's the whole exercise. It's small on purpose. I'd rather you make this mistake now, on fake data, than three months into your real budget sheet.

One opinion I'll plant here early: you do not need the fancier program, the fancier template, or the fancier anything to make this work. A spreadsheet just needs to answer a question you actually have. The tool is the least interesting part of this whole course, and I say that as someone whose job is technically "the tool."

Before next time

Just get comfortable opening whichever program you picked, typing into it, and undoing your mistakes without panicking. That's genuinely most of the battle.