Inserting new columns and rows

Let’s look at the example from the previous lesson where we created a basic table.

Imagine we want to add another column between columns B and C. Like with many things in Google Sheets, there are a few ways to do it, but to keep things simple, I’m going to look at two of the most common ways.

Click on the column heading to highlight the entire column; in this case, I’ve clicked on column B. With this column selected, right-click on the column heading to bring up a contextual menu. There you will see two options highlighted below to insert columns.

We want to insert a column to the right of the selected column, so go ahead and click this option, Boom! There you go; an extra column has been added.

If you want to insert more than one column at a time, you need to select the number of columns you want. For example, you can see below that columns C and D are selected (highlighted in the red box), and now it’s possible to insert two columns to the left or right.

So if you had five columns highlighted, you could insert five new columns; easy, just like falling off a log!

Okay, the other way to insert another column is just as easy; you just need to click on a cell to highlight it, then right-click to bring up the contextual menu as before. You’ll only see one option using this method: insert a column to the left of the highlighted cell.

It does the same thing as the previous method, except you can only add a column to the left of the highlighted cell.

Like before, if you want to insert more than one column at a time, you need to select the number of columns you need horizontally across cells rather than column headings.

You can see below that two cells are selected, and now it’s possible to insert two columns to the left. If five cells were highlighted horizontally, you could insert five new columns.

Inserting a new row

Much like inserting a new column, inserting a new row is the same affair.

Click on the row number to highlight the entire row; in this case, I’ve selected row 5. With this row chosen, right-click on the row number to bring up a contextual menu. There you will see two options highlighted below.

We want to insert a row below the selected row, so go ahead and click this option. Voila, an extra row has been added.

Okay, the other way to insert another row is just as easy; you just need to click on a cell to highlight it, then right-click to bring up the contextual menu as before.

You’ll only see one option using this method: inserting a row above the highlighted cell.

It does the same thing as the previous method, except you can only add a row above the highlighted cell.

Adding multiple rows is the same as explained with adding multiple columns, except you will need to highlight multiple row numbers or vertical cells.

Finishing Touches

Now we can go ahead and start adding in some extra data. I added an age column, a total for the net worth column and an average age along the bottom. I can’t help but notice a lot of money sloshing around; this is not far off one trillion dollars for just these six people!

I’ve added a slight tweak to the formula highlighted above by adding some text before the calculation to concatenate (join) them together. It’s a convenient tip which we’ll go over in another lesson.

That wraps up this topic; you’ll be inserting columns and rows to your heart's content now, but we also need to cover deleting, hiding and resizing rows and columns; that's up next.