Adding multiple columns at once on Google Docs Spreadsheets

Ok. So I was making a spreadsheet one day on Google Docs and it needed to have 31 columns (for 31 days) but annoyingly Google’s spreadsheet stops at column “T.”

Right clicking on that column brings up a box that offers the option to insert 1 column (either to the left or right). That is fine if you only need a few columns but what if you want to add many columns quickly?!!

So I googled the problem (ahh Google, the cause of and answer to all a web workers problems…) but surprisingly found nothing. I also (as far as I can remember) checked in the help documentation and found nothing there either.

Thus I grinned and bared inserting my few columns one by one.

A few days later, back in Google Docs, I happened to be selecting multiple columns at the same time and then when I right clicked on the last column it said “insert 5…” (see pic below)

Aaaa ha!

And so, Tori learnt that to insert multiple columns simultaneously in Google Docs spreadsheets he just had believe and select multiple columns before right clicking. He went on todo beautiful work with Google Documents and his love for the program grew and grew. In time others came around to the usefulness of the program too and they all lived happily ever after
:-)

inserting multiple columns in google docs

2 Responses to “Adding multiple columns at once on Google Docs Spreadsheets”


  • Many thanks for your tip. I think its rather irritating to see that adding more columns is not more intuïtive. Your tip helped me through this problem (altough I quickly went back to Excel first to finish the spreadsheet initially).

    Seems that I still have a lot to learn about Google Docs…

    • Hi Bas,
      No problem. I am very glad that it helped someone. I know first hand how frustrating it was before I figured this out – and how frustrating it was to not find anything written about it.

      I think we all have much to learn about gDocs and it is improving all the time. Hopefully that will continue. That would help our increasingly mobile lifestyles.

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