Sometimes, you don't want, or

don't have time to create a new spreadsheet from scratch.

Thankfully, there are many starter spreadsheet templates that help

you collect and analyze data for

different situations, without having to build out an entire new spreadsheet.

There are lots of spreadsheet templates available online that you can find using

search engines.

Also, Google Sheets has templates available.

To use the Sheets templates, you open up a new sheet, as you see on your screen here,

then you go to the File menu, select New,

and then go down to the bottom and click From template.

Then you get taken to a section that has general templates available to all users.

Note that you can also create templates for your organization.

We don't have any.

But here we are, and

there's several different example templates that we can choose from.

So let's look at the expense report template.

I click on it and here we have the template.

So I can enter my company name,

Smells Like Bacon Inc.

Our street is 123 Street.

It's a weird address, I know.

And then let's say we're based in Lake Tahoe,

CA, and we're from the Bay Area so we have a 415 number.

You get the deal, you can customize it to your needs.

So that's one example template that Google provides.

Let's look at another.

From template, again I'm following the same process and

let's look at what their travel planner template looks like.

See the trip title at the top, let's say we're going to Paris.

Paris Summer 2020.

And we can insert some rows, so I'm gonna click

the row here, insert above, insert above.

Let's say we're going with Andrew, Nick.

Wow, look at that.

What happened there?

So the formatting was messed up, and

what I did to get around that is I just copied the rows and pasted them in.

Let's say we're going with Andrew, Alena, Craig, and Ben.

And the dates are July

7th through August 7th.

We're taking a long trip.

And Paris, France, so I'm gonna copy these.

Remember, I can use my keyboard shortcuts, copy and

then Shift+Cmd+Down, and then paste.

But the main point is that there's a lot of templates available

through Google Sheets specifically, or you can search on a search

engine to find some templates that are available from other sources as well.

Similar to coding frameworks, templates can save you a lot of time.

Don't be shy to look for example templates.

More importantly, remember that the company you work for

might have preferred formatting for certain types of spreadsheets.

Make sure to check and see if there are templates your colleagues and

boss would prefer that you use.

Indeed, presenting your data in a format that's familiar to your coworkers will

reduce friction when sharing information with them.

Sometimes a template simply won't do though, and

it makes more sense to start from scratch.

The more advanced you get with spreadsheets and the better you get at

building them, sometimes it's just easier to start from scratch.

For example, in my first years as an analyst,

I would often rely on templates when building earnings and transaction models.

However by my second year, I preferred to build my own,

as it helped me understand the data I was analyzing better.