Typing data in, and fixing it when you mistype
Okay sooo. We know what rows and columns are now, we know cells have names like B12, and we've got a question written down for our sheet. So let's actually put something in it.
This lesson is not glamorous. It's just typing, and fixing typing. But this is where most of the actual friction lives when you're new to sheets, so let's go slow.
Getting data into a cell
Click a cell, type, hit Enter. That's it, that's the whole move. Enter moves you down to the next cell. Tab moves you sideways to the next one over. Once you know that, you can move through a row or a column pretty fast without touching your mouse.
A couple things that trip people up right away:
- If you start typing and the cell already had something in it, you just erased what was there. No warning, no "are you sure." It's just gone and replaced with what you typed.
- If you want to ADD to what's already there instead of replacing it, double-click the cell first, or hit the F2 key (that's the Excel one, in Sheets it's usually just double-click or hitting Enter puts your cursor in). This is one of those spots where I swap tools in my head and mutter about it, so if I fumble this part live, that's why.
- Numbers versus text matters more than people expect. If you type 04 and it turns into 4, the sheet decided you meant a number, not a code. We'll deal with that specific annoyance when we get to formatting cells, just know it's coming.
Fixing a mistake you just made
Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on a Mac) undoes your last action. This is genuinely the most useful keyboard shortcut in the entire program and I want you to use it without hesitation. You didn't break anything permanent by trying something. Undo exists so you can be a little reckless.
If you've already clicked away and the mistake is sitting there quietly wrong, just click the cell and retype it. There's no ceremony to fixing a cell. You don't need to delete the whole row and start over, you just click the one box that's wrong and put the right thing in it.
Fixing a mistake you find later
This is the more common one, not gonna lie. You type a bunch of stuff in, move on with your life, and three days later you notice a number looks off.
Click the cell. Look at what's actually in it, up in that formula bar at the top, not just what's displayed. Sometimes what LOOKS wrong is actually a formula pointing somewhere it shouldn't, and what looks right is a coincidence. I've been burned by that before, we'll get into formulas more later, but keep it in the back of your mind now.
Here's the thing about "fixing" nap data
I built a whole tracker once for Alex's naps when he was about one. Start time, end time, how long, what time of day. I had a whole theory that if I just collected enough data I'd find the pattern and finally know when he'd actually sleep.
There was no pattern. None. I fixed and re-fixed and retyped that sheet for weeks thinking I'd mistyped something, because surely the data was wrong, not my theory. Babies don't respect spreadsheets. I still have that file. I look at it sometimes as a monument to being wrong about what a sheet can tell you.
I bring that up here because "fixing your mistakes" isn't only about typos. Sometimes the sheet is typed in correctly and the mistake is the question you asked it. That's worth catching too, and it's a different kind of fixing than hitting Ctrl+Z.
An opinion, while we're here
You do not need to build five columns to categorize something you're tracking at home. I see people set up elaborate systems, then abandon them in two weeks because keeping it updated became its own chore. Keep your columns to the stuff you'll actually keep typing in. Precision you won't maintain is worse than a rough number you'll actually keep current.
A small caution
Autosave means you don't lose work to a crash or a toddler with apple juice, we covered that already. But autosave does NOT protect you from typing wrong information and not noticing. Autosave saves your mistakes too, instantly, same as it saves everything else. So don't let it make you careless about double-checking numbers that matter, like anything financial. Speed of saving isn't the same as accuracy of what you typed.
Before next time
Open your sheet, type in five or six real rows of whatever your question is about, and on purpose mistype one of them so you can practice fixing it. Small mess, small fix, no pressure.
- C