How to Group Rows and Columns in Google Sheets (2022)

While working on a spreadsheet, you often face situations where your spreadsheet gets too large and becomes hard to analyze for meaningful insights.

That’s where grouping comes in…

Grouping rows and columns can make large and complex spreadsheets much easier to read and understand.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to group rows and columns in Google Sheets using real-life examples.

Let’s start with an example…

01. A Real-Life Example of Grouping Rows in Google Sheets

Let’s say you have prepared a spreadsheet for monthly office supply expenses on each item.

You have also totaled in a categorized manner for a better summary view.

Now, your senior manager is interested in only the total expenses in each category.

This is where grouping rows will come to your aid.

Once you group the rows, only the relevant category total for each month will be shown, with an option to drill down to the detailed expenses.

The + sign beside the row number gives your manager the option to view the rows that are grouped.

This was a simple example of how grouping rows in Google Sheets can help you prepare a clean and concise spreadsheet.

So, are you ready to learn how to group rows in Google Sheets?

Let’s get into it…

02. How to Group Rows in Google Sheets

1. Select the rows that you want to group. To select multiple rows, click on one of the row number, press-hold and drag your cursor down until you’ve selected all the rows you want to group.

2. Open the View menu.

4. Hover your cursor over Group option and select Group rows 2-6. The row number will dynamically change based on what rows are selected in your sheet.

The above steps would instantly group the selected rows, and you’ll notice a – symbol has appeared on the left side of grouped rows.

When you click on the – symbol, it will hide all the grouped rows from your view and the symbol would change into a + sign that indicates it contains some grouped rows.

03. Keyboard Shortcut to Group Rows in Google Sheets

Does the above process sound like too much work to you?

I have good news for you!

There is a faster way to group rows in Google Sheets using keyboard shortcuts.

So, let’s say we want to group the next category of expenses (row number 9-11)

Here’s how we can do this using the shortcut key:

1. Select the rows that you want to group (in our example, row number 9-11)

2. Hold the Alt + Shift key and the press the Right arrow key on your keyboard (windows users)

For Mac users, the key combination for grouping rows is Option + Shift + Right arrow key.

Pressing the shortcut key will instantly group the selected rows.

I personally find this keyboard shortcut quite useful when working on a large dataset.

HELPFUL RESOURCES

• How to insert several rows in Google Sheets (A simple shortcut to insert multiple rows in spreadsheet)
• How to do subscript Google Sheets (Format simple text into subscript in Google Sheets)

04. How to Ungroup Rows in Google Sheets

What if you no longer want the grouped rows?

Well, you can revert the rows to their original state as and when required within a few clicks.

Here’s how to ungroup rows in Google Sheets:

1. Place the cursor over the desired grouped rows (+/-) icon and right click on it to bring up the pop-up menu.

2. Click on the Remove Group option appearing in the pop-up menu (the second option.)

That’s it… This will remove the grouping from your rows.

QUICK TIP

• You can also press the Alt + Shift + Left Arrow key to quickly ungroup the rows in Google Sheets.

05. How to Group Columns in Google Sheets

Just like rows, you can also group columns in Google Sheets.

Let’s assume, you have a dataset containing monthly and quarterly expenses on marketing.

Now, for ease of understanding, you want to group month-wise expenses of each quarter, so that you can focus on only quarterly numbers.

Here’s how you can do this:

1. Select the columns you want to group. In our example, we want to group column B, C, D containg month-wise expsnes of first quarter.

Note: Make sure to select the entire column by clicking on the column alphabet numbering appearing at the top-most of the document.

2. Once you’ve selected the column, right click on it to access the options available for this selection.
3. From the available options, scroll down to the bottom and hover your mouse over View more column actions and select Group column B-D. The column number will change dynamically based on columns selected in your sheet.

That’s it… The above steps will instantly group the columns B-D and a minus icon will appear at the top of grouped columns.

You can click on the – icon to hide the grouped rows from the view and click on the + icon to revert back to the same point.

QUICK TIP

• You can also press the Alt + Shift + Right Arrow key to quickly group columns in Google Sheets just like rows.

06. Final Thought on Grouping Data:

If you working on a big dataset, grouping rows and columns will make your spreadsheet more manageable and, therefore, easier to read and use.

Thankfully, Google Sheets makes it quite easy to group consecutive rows and columns.

I hope you found this tutorial on how to group rows in Google Sheets useful.