Sheets & Forms
Google Sheets is an awesome app, especially for the price. *wink*
But to be honest, it’s not really optimized for mobile use. Yes, you can access Google Sheets on a smartphone, and it certainly works in a pinch, but don’t expect to be making any major edits on a small screen.
And yet, it’s hard to imagine that a spreadsheet program optimized for mobile would actually be useful. Spreadsheet software is complex and feature-full. Paring it down would likely render it pointless. So what do you do when you want the power of a spreadsheet, but also the clean simplicity of a designed-for-mobile interface? You might give Forms a try!
Let’s say you have a spreadsheet of data that you work with when you’re on your computer, but you want to be able to add data to it with a mobile device when you’re away from your desk. Linking a form to your spreadsheet is a pretty simple way to get that smartphone-friendly interface you’re looking for.
Both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel have their forms counterparts: Google Forms and Microsoft Forms. And they both work pretty much the same way when linked. Simply add a response to your form, submit, and you’ll nearly instantaneously see the resulting data added to your spreadsheet in its own row. The benefit of using Forms in this way is that Forms look great on mobile. You can also have multiple people submitting responses to a form to simultaneously collect data from multiple users. Neat! :D
A couple of ways I’ve intertwined my Google Sheets templates with Forms:
The Home Inventory - The Google Form enables the user to enter home valuables, serial numbers, estimated values, and more using their mobile device while they walk around their house.
The Potty Training Tracker - You aren’t likely to run to your computer every time your toddler has a success on the potty to jot it down. But with the integrated Google Form, you can log (no pun intended) potty training activity with a few taps of your finger on your smartphone. When I was using this tool, I had a link directly to the Form on the home screen of my phone, for quick access.
It’s worth noting that Forms data only goes one direction: into the spreadsheet. You’ll have to hop on the computer (or work on the less-than-optimized-for-mobile spreadsheet on your phone) to make changes to or delete data entered via a Form. But it’s a great option for quick data capture into a spreadsheet.
