How to Make Good Looking Google Sheets, by Spreadsheet Life on YouTube. 3 min 45 s.
- Video length
- 3 min 45 s
- Time to do it
- 10 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 9
What you need
Steps
Open your sheet in Google Sheets and click the box in the top left corner, above row 1 and left of column A, to select every cell. Font and size changes now apply to the whole sheet.
Pick one clean font such as Arial, Roboto or Inter and set the size to 10 or 11. Skip decorative fonts, because they make numbers hard to read.
Select your header row, make it bold, and give it a dark fill colour with white text. This separates labels from data at a glance.
Turn off the default gridlines under View, then Show, then Gridlines. The sheet looks cleaner straight away, so add borders only where you really need them.
Select your data and open Format, then Alternating colors. Choose a light style with white and pale grey or blue bands to keep long rows readable.
Widen columns by selecting them and double clicking the right edge of a column header. Drag the edge inwards to shorten any column that is far too wide.
Set text to wrap with Format, then Wrapping, then Wrap. Align numbers to the right and text to the left, since consistent alignment does most of the work.
Add a single bottom border to your header row instead of boxes around every cell. Too many borders make a sheet look busy and cramped.
Freeze the header with View, then Freeze, then 1 row. Delete empty rows and columns at the edges and set row heights to fit your text.
Tips and common mistakes
Stick to two colours and one font family, because more than that starts to look messy.
Use the Paint format tool to copy formatting from one cell to a whole column in a couple of clicks.
Avoid merged cells inside data tables, as they break sorting, filters and pivot tables.
Questions
How do I remove gridlines in Google Sheets?
Go to View, then Show, then Gridlines and untick it. The lines disappear for everyone viewing the sheet, but print settings are handled separately.
Why do my numbers look uneven?
They are probably left aligned or stored as text. Select the column, open Format, then Number, and align the values to the right.
Does the formatting survive export to Excel or PDF?
Most of it does. Check the exported file anyway, because custom fonts and some borders can shift slightly.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
