Google Sheets’ new formatting feature has Excel toggles excited

Google has now added a way to create easily formatted tables in Sheets with one click, something Excel had for years. Now, if you have a block of data that you’d like to quickly turn into your own little island of filters and sorting rules, that’s totally possible (or will be soon, depending on where you are in Google’s release queue). Alive!

As someone who has maintained a shared budget spreadsheet in Google Sheets for about a decade and would love to not have to create all my filters and sort piece by piece, I’m excited. And judging by a quick search, I’m not alone — people to have I have been Asking for independent tables like this for years.

What Google has created here looks a little like AI-generated tables from their I/O developer conference this week, but perhaps a little more power user focused, and you don’t need Gemini integration. If the new feature has already arrived in your account, you can try it out by selecting a data block and clicking Format > Convert to table.

Once you do this, Sheets will automatically create filters for each column and add visual separators for your rows, so you don’t have to manually select every other row and make them gray. The change also comes with automatically formatted column types, filters, and easier creation of drop-down menus.

It will also add a table menu so you can create specific filter combinations for your entire table or adjust the range of data it covers. Google says this update also includes a new type of visualization option called “Create group by visualization,” which lets you put data into groups separated by your column filters — so if you have a filter for priority level, you can group records by priority one, priority two, priority three, and so on. There are also table templates tailored for “everyday tasks like project management, inventory management, event planning, and more.”

The new tables feature has not yet reached everyone. As is typical of Google, it will be rolled out gradually. Some will receive it by May 30th and everyone else should receive it by June 6th.