Searching for a Term in Sheets

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated November 28, 2013)

When adding or reviewing information in Sheets, there have been many times that I've needed to get additional information about a topic or search for supporting documentation. The normal way I do that is to open a new browser tab and use the Google toolbar to enter the term or keyword I need to research. If I get ambitious and don't want to suffer the humiliation of mistyping something, I'll often even copy the term from the spreadsheet and paste it into the toolbar.

That's all good, but Sheets provides an even faster way to find information, right within the spreadsheet itself. The next time you need to do your research, follow these steps:

  1. Select the term or keyword, just as you would if you were getting ready to copy it. (Don't just select a cell; you need to select the term or keyword within the cell.)
  2. Right-click on the term or keyword you selected. You'll see a Context menu appear.
  3. Choose the option that starts out "Search Google for". (The option is followed by whatever you selected in step 1.)

At this point, Sheets opens a new browser tab and displays a Google search result page for the term or keyword.

Pretty slick, huh? And it is much faster than my traditional approach of manually opening a browser tab and searching.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He  is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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