Google SheetsHow the groups are arranged
Only in Sheets holds the functions with no direct twin in Excel 2021, or with a different shape there: QUERY, ARRAYFORMULA, IMPORTRANGE, the Sheets forms of FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE, SPLIT and JOIN, FLATTEN and SPARKLINE. These are the reason to learn Sheets on its own terms.
Lookup covers VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP and the INDEX and MATCH pair, each with the tricks that Sheets adds, such as looking up a whole column with one formula.
Logical has IF and IFS, and IFERROR, which Sheets users need often because FILTER and the import functions return errors in ordinary situations.
Math and counting has the conditional adders and counters, SUMIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIF and COUNTIFS.
Text includes the three regular-expression functions, which test, extract and replace by pattern, the joining functions, TEXT for formatting, and the checks ISEMAIL and ISURL.
Date and time has DATEDIF for ages and lengths of service.
Web and import holds the functions that fetch live data: prices, translations, pictures and tables from web pages.
Related functions share a page
Functions that are learnt together are explained together: SPLIT with JOIN, SORT with SORTN, UNIQUE with COUNTUNIQUE, IF with IFS. Seeing them side by side on the same sample makes the difference plain.
Not sure which function you need?
| I want to | Look at |
|---|---|
| summarise a table by category | QUERY, SUMIF |
| show only the rows that match | FILTER, QUERY |
| fill a whole column from one formula | ARRAYFORMULA |
| read data from another spreadsheet | IMPORTRANGE |
| split a cell into several | SPLIT, REGEXEXTRACT |
| pull a number out of text | REGEXEXTRACT |
| remove unwanted characters | REGEXREPLACE |
| check that a value has the right shape | REGEXMATCH, ISEMAIL |
| list each value once, or count them | UNIQUE, COUNTUNIQUE |
| get the top few rows | SORTN |
| fetch a price or exchange rate | GOOGLEFINANCE |
| bring in a table from a web page | IMPORTHTML |
| bring a value from another table | VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP |
| work out an age | DATEDIF |
| draw a small chart in a cell | SPARKLINE |
This is an independent help site. It is not connected with or approved by Google. Google Sheets is a trademark of Google LLC, named here only to say which program a formula is for. The people and figures in the sample sheets are made up.