Here's the messiest mistake you're making in spreadsheets, and it's happening even before you do anything in your sheet, and it happens to every single sheet you're doing. So what's going on is you start a sheet and you put in data and it gets messy, or you put in data , other people put in data , data gets in there. I'm gonna explain to you why it's messy from the get-go and what you're missing. So what's going on is there is no fix to this mistake. That is font, that is size, row size, column size, nothing. The mistake you're making is not using data validation . Now, let me explain a little bit about this. So we can be using spreadsheets for CRMs, we can be using them for just a little Most Common Errors and How To Handle Them in Google Sheets Beginners Make This Spreadsheet Mistake All The Time!

bit of data entry, we can be using them to do project management, whatever it is. Often, we're going to have one of two things: dates or numbers, and we're going to have, like, some qualitative data , some l- data where we need to select it from a list. There's only a few items of text that could potentially be here. Like in this case, we have a name of, like, an employee, something employee here. We have an interaction, what they did with a client, and these two columns are going to get super messy because we're gonna do some things like, oh, on this day, 20/06, uh, we talked to Sam Jones. And on this day, uh, the 4th of, uh, 12/2026, 2026, we talked to Mr. Project Based Task Management

Jones or Mrs. Jones. Are these all the same person? Maybe they should be. But if we just type in anything, we're gonna get anything. If you allow people to type in anything, they will type in anything. But I'm gonna fix this mistake right now with some data validation , and it's going to feel absolutely magical. Right, I'm gonna go into the C column here, and I can go to data , data validation . It's right there. I can also right-click, and I can scroll down to data validation . Sometimes this, this UI, it's, it, it might be in some other places, like view more column actions. Could be… That's where it used to be. Right now, it's in data validation . You Should Know The Limitations of Data Validation

But here, I'm gonna add a dala- data validation rule. I'm gonna add a rule. I'm gonna say the criteria is, is valid date. That's all I'm gonna do. I'm gonna click Done. I'm gonna close this. I'm gonna see one weird thing, which is that the header row has the same data validation , and it says it's invalid, must be a validate. So let me fix that. Right click Data Validation . I'm gonna go here at the top to this range . I'm gonna just say Sheet1!C2 to C1000, or even just C, and click Done. And it'll fix it to whatever the current last column is. Okay, now it's no longer invalid, but what's absolutely magical is that I Restrict Access to a Cell if Another Cell is Blank

can double-click and get a picker here. I'm gonna say today. I'm gonna click here, today. Click, and I'm gonna say two days from now. It is absolutely magical, and if I'm not as zoomed in, it looks like this there. It doesn't take up the entire screen, but it is pretty cool. I absolutely love this. I think it's absolutely one of the most magical things about Google Sheets that we can implement right away in just a few clicks, right? The other way we do dale… data validation is if there's some text, and we want to select s- text from a certain select set of texts. For example, we only have a few clients, and we wanna say these clients are this interaction, and here's a different client, like Kermit the Frog. How do I Insert Emojis into Google Sheets? Google Sheets Interface Changes Add Click Tracking To Your Google Sheets | Bitly in a Google Sheet Gmail Declutter Engine

Not Kermit the Front. And if I start typing and I go, "Oh, Kermit the Front," no, that, that's not right. Or I say Kermit Frog or Frog, Frong Kermit, these are all the same, and, and again, if you let anyone type in anything, they will type in anything. And it'll be not malicious. It will not be malicious at all. They're just trying to get their work done, and they don't realize that we need to see how many interactions that we have with a client. We need to bill this client. If we wanna do other things with this client, we need this data validated. So right click, and we're gonna use Drop-down now. And this dropdown , we can add a f- few items.

Kermit the Frog. Let me get that right at some, some point. Click Done. And if I want it to be over the course of the entire column , I do have to change this D2 to colon D, D2 colon D. Click Done. And you'll see right away that some of these have a little red triangle in the top right, and those are invalid. That's great. Now we can go and change this to all Sam Jones. Change this one to Sam Jones, change this one to Kermit the Frog. And also, one extra benefit of having this data validation be a dropdown is if I start typing Kermit… Oh, my God, it's right there. I don't have to type out the whole thing. I just select it. You Should Know The Limitations of Data Validation

Isn't that awesome? It's also a little fuzzy search, so I can just type in frog, and there is the option, Kermit the Frog. If you don't like this pill, which I personally, as an old man of spreadsheets, I don't like it one bit, but I do understand that some people love it. But you don't have to have it. You can click this Edit button, and you can say, "Hey," down here, Advanced Options , "I actually want to display it as an arrow." Okay? So it looks like text, but it has a little arrow that indicates, okay, I can select a different one here. Cool. Or plain text . This plain text is fascinating because it will look just like normal text, but when you start typing, it has the dropdown . It is m- absolutely magical. Sometimes you don't want absolute magic. You don't want to just, like, su- surprise people. Frustrated With Sheets New Dropdown Pills? Did Google Take A Feature Away From Users?

So that's why I prefer, in 95% of dropdowns, having arrow. However, I totally understand, and I am empathetic to your needs if you want the chip or you want plain text to absolutely wow them. Or you don't even want someone else to see that there's a possibility that you've made your life easier and better in spreadsheets. You just want them to see the data . That happens. I see plain text as a very valid option here. And click Done. It'll ask me, do I wanna apply it, uh… Yeah, I wanna apply it all, all of them. So now I just get my work done super easy, and I get my data validated. However, let me say one thing, is that data validation means that we will validate the data type. 10 Things I Hate About Your Spreadsheets Are You Frustrated With Sheets New Dropdown Chips?

We will validate the format . We will not make sure that your format is… That we will not make sure that your data is correct. That's what I'm trying to get the point. We will say, "Yes, this is Sam Jones. This is not Samantha Jones, not Mr. Jones, not Mrs. Jones, not Mr. or Mrs. Jones. It's Sam Jones." But is Sam Jones the correct one, the correct client for this interaction? Data validation won't help you there. I'm sorry. Hopefully, this was really fun, and I hope all of your spreadsheets are better because of this video. You are watching better sheets here on YouTube. Make sure you check out this video or this video and subscribe right now to get more tips, tricks, how tos, get more out of your Google sheets than you ever have before. I'm excited to be making a ton more videos here. You Should Know The Limitations of Data Validation How to Validate Email Addresses for FREE in 17 Minutes

Ask me questions down in the comments and I will answer them in future videos. But for right now, right here, one of these videos is gonna be your next Google sheet. Ask Questions Google Sheets Interface Changes Download Google Sheets