My first Google Docs spreadsheet

We will create a new Google Spreadsheet and use it to calculate some basic monthly living expenses.

In this tutorial we will create a new Spreadsheet which is something most people are used to from Microsoft Excel.

Sign in to your Gmail account and click Documents in the Google menu (see picture).

You can go directly to Google Docs by clicking the following link docs.google.com, but you still need to sign-in to your Google account when asked.

When in Docs, click Create and choose Spreadsheet.

You have just created a new and empty Google Spreadsheet. You have your menu, a tool bar and basically every thing you need for creating spreadsheets.

Let's now start making a simple spreadsheet, that represents the monthly expenses you might have.

Click in a cell of your choice and enter Expenses.

I've chosen the cell 2B. That means I have chosen the field in a second row and column B.

Let's make the Expenses title bold.

Click the Bold button (see picture).

No enter the title Cost, make it bold as well then enter the expenses like I did (see picture).

You can always make your columns or rows wider or narrower by clicking and dragging the edges (see picture).

Let's now see how much expenses doe our monthly expenses actually cost us.

At the bottom of your spreadsheet, enter Together: then click the neighboring cell (see picture).

Now click the functions button in the toolbar above and choose SUM (see picture).

Select the cells where you added the values and press Enter.

And you got your monthly expenses calculated.

You probably didn't want to know that right? ;)

Let's now change the text color.

Click the cell where you want to change the text color, the cell with the total value of our monthly living expenses, then click the Text Color button and choose a color of your liking (see picture).

Text color in the cell you decided to change should now be different.

Let's now put a name to our Google spreadsheet.

Click the Untitled spreadsheet (see picture) ...

... and enter a name for your spreadsheet.

Click OK.

In case you didn't notice, your spreadsheet gets saved automatically on every change you make, so you shouldn't be to worried about losing your work, if your browser freezes or you loose an Internet connection.

Let's go back to our Google Docs Homepage.

Click the Home - Google Docs tab in your browser.

And here's your saved spreadsheet, available from any place on earth, all you need is a computer, tablet or smartphone, an Internet connection and you're in business!

For the lesson on how to create a Google Docs text document, click here.