Convert Excel to Google Sheets: Preserve Data & Protections

How to Convert Excel to Google Sheets

Converting Excel files to Google Sheets allows users to leverage Google Sheets' collaboration features while maintaining the integrity of their data. This guide provides comprehensive steps and methods to convert Excel files to Google Sheets, ensuring data, including formulas and formatting, is accurately transferred.

Converting Excel files to Google Sheets and saving protections can streamline your workflow and enhance collaboration. Leverage Bardeen to automate these processes, saving time and reducing manual errors.

Convert Excel to Google Sheets

To convert an Excel file to Google Sheets, you can use Google Drive or Google Sheets directly. Here are the steps for both methods:

1. Upload the Excel file to Google Drive by clicking 'New' > 'File Upload' and selecting your file.
2. Once uploaded, right-click the file in Google Drive and select 'Open with' > 'Google Sheets'.
3. In the Google Sheets interface, go to 'File' > 'Save as Google Sheets'. This action creates a Google Sheets version of the Excel file.

How to Convert Excel to Google Sheets Without Losing Formatting

Preserving formatting when converting Excel files to Google Sheets is crucial for maintaining the visual layout and data structure. To ensure minimal loss of formatting:

• Use standard fonts and cell formatting options that are supported by both Excel and Google Sheets.
• Avoid using Excel-specific features that don't have direct equivalents in Google Sheets.
• After conversion, manually adjust any formatting in Google Sheets as needed.

Convert Excel to Google Sheets with Formulas

Formulas are often critical components of Excel files. When converting to Google Sheets:

• Most Excel formulas work directly in Google Sheets without modification.
• For complex formulas or those using Excel-specific functions, check Google Sheets' documentation for equivalent functions.
• Use the 'Find and Replace' feature in Google Sheets to quickly adjust formula references if necessary.

Explore our blog post on how to automate Google Sheets for insights on maximizing productivity.

Automatically Convert Excel to Google Sheets

For an automated approach to converting Excel files to Google Sheets:

1. In Google Drive, click on the gear icon and select 'Settings'.
2. Under the 'General' tab, enable 'Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format'.
3. This setting automatically converts all future Excel uploads to Google Sheets format upon opening them.

Note: This method works best for straightforward Excel files. Complex files with advanced formatting or macros may require manual adjustments post-conversion.

Save Protections

Google Sheets supports protected ranges and sheets to restrict editing. To save protections after converting from Excel:

• Open the converted Google Sheet.
• Go to 'Data' > 'Protected sheets and ranges'.
• Select or define the ranges or sheets you want to protect, set permissions, and save.

This method ensures that your data remains secure and only editable by authorized users, similar to protection features in Excel.

Discover useful Google Sheets addons to enhance your productivity and data analysis capabilities.

Converting Excel files to Google Sheets and saving protections can streamline your workflow and enhance collaboration. While the steps outlined above provide a manual approach, leveraging Bardeen can automate these processes, saving time and reducing manual errors.

Here are some examples of how Bardeen can automate tasks related to Google Sheets:

1. Enrich email contacts and save to Google Sheets: Automate the process of enriching email contacts with valuable information and seamlessly save them to Google Sheets, perfect for marketing and sales teams.
2. Save data from the Google News page to Google Sheets: Keep up with the latest news by automatically saving information from Google News to Google Sheets, ideal for researchers and content creators.
3. Save information from Google Maps search results to Google Sheets: Effortlessly save data from Google Maps searches to Google Sheets, useful for market research and logistics planning.

By automating these tasks, you can focus on more strategic work. Get started by downloading the Bardeen app at Bardeen.ai/download.