Google Sheets makes spreadsheet work easy with its lightweight form and useful collaboration features. But did you know that you can make your work in Google Sheets even more efficient? There are a multitude of excellent extensions that you can install to enhance your productivity and save you a lot of time.
How to Add or Remove Extensions in Google Sheets
Extensions can be accessed by going to the top menu “Extensions > Extensions”.
Select “Get add-ons” to open the “Google Workspace Marketplace” and find and install Google Sheets extensions that catch your interest. Once installed, the new extension may appear in the Extensions menu for you to use.
Select “Manage extensions” to view all the add-ons you have installed on your account. This is where you can uninstall extensions that you don’t want or need. You’ll also have shortcuts to help resources and reporting in the Manage section.
To remove extensions, go to “Manage extensions,” click on the three-dot icon at the top right of an app, then select “Uninstall.”
Our Selection of the Best Google Sheets Extensions
Now that you understand the basics of adding and removing extensions, we’ll show you some excellent extensions that you should start using right away to be more productive and efficient in Google Sheets.
1. Power Tools
Creator: Ablebits
Price: 30-day free trial
Crawlan.com
One of the most popular extensions for Sheets, Power Tools offers you 30 solutions for common tasks that would otherwise take up a lot of your precious time. Noteworthy functions include:
- Merge and combine sheets, cells into specified rows, columns, or ranges.
- Manipulate uppercase and lowercase – change to uppercase or lowercase.
- Remove unwanted characters, strings, line breaks, commas, leading and trailing spaces, etc.
- Generate random values, dates, numbers, strings, etc.
- Compare data, find and remove duplicates.
- Split assistant tools.
2. Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM)
Creator: Talarian
Price: Free individual account with up to 50 recipients per day. Paid accounts start at $25 per year per user.
Crawlan.com
Yet Another Mail Merge is a powerful extension for Google Sheets and Gmail that allows you to send personalized mass emails from a Gmail account to a list of contacts in Google Sheets. It is also capable of tracking if your emails are opened, if a response is given, or if a contact unsubscribes.
This saves you a lot of time if you’re doing email campaigns and storing your contacts in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Emails sent via YAMM arrive in the contact’s primary inbox, not in the Junk or Spam folder.
3. FileDrop
Creator: HeadwayApps
Price: Free plan available. Paid subscription starts at $5 per month.
Crawlan.com
Welcome to our very own FileDrop!
FileDrop is a powerful sidebar application for Google Sheets that allows you to insert any type of file into Google Sheets cells using drag and drop. The files you add are uploaded to your Google Drive and linked to the file for your convenience.
It also allows you to easily add files already present in your Google Drive using the Drive browser, which acts as a file manager application. A search function is available if you need to quickly find a specific file in Google Drive without leaving Google Sheets. This experience is enhanced by a file library that keeps track of your recent history, allowing you to easily track your files and reuse them in multiple documents.
There are also other very useful features, such as converting PDF to text or image to text using optical character recognition, as well as inserting images into cells or over cells.
FileDrop offers a free plan, a premium plan for advanced users, and a plan with a greater emphasis on team collaboration.
Come and discover us now at GetFileDrop.com and start your productive journey with Google Sheets, Docs, and Drive for free.
4. Translate My Sheet
Creator: Joey Bronner
Price: Free
Crawlan.com
Translate My Sheet is a fairly simple extension that allows you to translate your entire spreadsheet or parts of it into another language with just one click. This saves you from using formulas in cells as it is a one-step translation tool that uses Google Translate.
5. Crop Sheet
Creator: Eric Koleda
Price: Free
Crawlan.com
Crop Sheet is another simple tool that allows you to easily remove extra rows and columns from a sheet. This is particularly useful when you want to keep only small portions of a massive spreadsheet instead of having to manually select large amounts of data.
Here are the two cropping options available with Crop Sheet:
- Crop data: Keep only cell ranges with data.
- Crop selection: Keep only the selected cells.
6. SyncWith | Any API
Creator: SyncWith Inc.
Price: Free trial available. Paid plans start at $50 per month.
Crawlan.com
SyncWith is a more technical extension that retrieves data from third-party services and APIs and imports it into your spreadsheet. This saves you time compared to manual copying and pasting of data, so you can focus on leveraging the data. Your data can be updated on a schedule and shared with a team.
This provides great value for marketers, advertisers, analysts, traders, educators, social media managers, accountants, project managers, and other fields that rely on data to make informed decisions. It is also highly useful for business owners managing inventory, shipments, and corporate finances.
SyncWith’s subscription model is based on data refresh rates in tiers. A free account can be used to try out the service with up to 35 refreshes in a report.
Conclusion on Google Sheets Extensions that Will Save You Time
There are many ways to be more productive in Google Sheets. Using time-saving extensions is an obvious choice if you want to maximize your time and work smarter rather than harder.
As they always say, time is money. And if you value your time, you better figure out which extensions you should try next.
At FileDrop, we’re always looking for new ways to work smarter and frustration-free. Subscribe to our newsletter below to be the first to discover our helpful resources.
