Google docs team has announced gadgets, auto-fill support, formula help while typing and several other goodies yesterday. I was experimenting with these stuff and wanted to share a cool idea with you all.
Tracking / Sharing your goals (or resolutions, progress) with everyone using Google Spreadsheet Gadgets:
For the example purpose, let us build a gadget that will track my new year resolution “to run 500 miles in 2008”. When done, the gadget looks something like this: (go ahead, play with it)
Step 1: Create the data format as per your need
I created a table like this, you can create something depending on what you want to track / share:
Step 2: Findout what you want to share and calculate
In my case, I needed 2 metrics, “miles ran so far” and “miles remaining”, the “miles ran so far” is a simple sum of the entire table shown above, the other metric is 500 minus “miles ran so far”. Once you have the values, display them 2 columns as shown below:
Step 3: Generate a gadget for the data you want to share
- This is even more simple, just click on the gadgets icon on the tool bar on top (shown below) and select gadgets.
- Select the gadget type, I have selected a bar-chart as I wanted to show progress in a stacked chart.
- Next enter data range for the gadget (just as you would do with an excel chart dialog) and press save.
- Finally publish the gadget by selecting the publish option, this will provide html iframe code for the gadget, simply paste the code in your blog, sidebar or coffee mug and you are good to go.
If you want to play with my sheet: google spreadsheet gadgets demo, So what are you waiting for, go ahead, play around with google spreadsheet gadgets, flash your gadgets.
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.