Google Sheets can do everything Excel’s basic formulas do, plus a few superpowers Excel doesn’t have, like QUERY, IMPORTRANGE and GOOGLETRANSLATE. This free cheat sheet puts 50+ of the most useful Google Sheets formulas on two printable pages.
Download the free Google Sheets formulas cheat sheet (PDF, 2 pages)
What’s inside
| Section | Formulas |
|---|---|
| Sheets-only power tools | QUERY, IMPORTRANGE, ARRAYFORMULA, GOOGLETRANSLATE, DETECTLANGUAGE, GOOGLEFINANCE, IMAGE, SPARKLINE, IMPORTHTML, HYPERLINK |
| Lookup | XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, INDEX + MATCH, FILTER |
| Lists & arrays | UNIQUE, SORT, COUNTUNIQUE, SEQUENCE |
| Totals & logic | SUM, AVERAGE, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, IF, IFS, IFERROR, AND, OR |
| Text & cleaning | SPLIT, JOIN, TEXTJOIN, TRIM, PROPER, UPPER, LEFT/RIGHT/MID, SUBSTITUTE, LEN |
| Regex & checks | REGEXMATCH, REGEXEXTRACT, REGEXREPLACE, ISEMAIL, ISURL |
| Dates | TODAY, NOW, EDATE, EOMONTH, NETWORKDAYS.INTL, DATEDIF, TEXT |
5 Google Sheets formulas Excel users should know
| Formula | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| QUERY | Build reports with SQL-like commands | =QUERY(A1:D100,"select B, sum(D) group by B",1) |
| IMPORTRANGE | Pull data from another spreadsheet | =IMPORTRANGE("url","Sheet1!A1:D100") |
| ARRAYFORMULA | One formula for a whole column | =ARRAYFORMULA(B2:B*C2:C) |
| GOOGLETRANSLATE | Translate cells | =GOOGLETRANSLATE(A2,"en","ar") |
| SPLIT | Split text into columns | =SPLIT(A2,",") |
Learn them step by step: the QUERY function and IMPORTRANGE.
Excel vs Google Sheets: small differences
- SORT: Sheets uses TRUE/FALSE for ascending/descending. Excel uses 1/-1.
- FILTER: in Sheets, each extra condition is a separate argument. In Excel, you multiply conditions.
- Open ranges: Sheets handles
A2:A(to the bottom) nicely, which is great for growing lists.
More in Google Sheets vs Excel.