6 Tips for Formatting Headers in Google Sheets

There are 6 simple steps you should take to smarten up the header row in a table. Here are my suggestions:

1. Bold headings This will make them stand out from the rest of the data
   

2. Centre align the headings This ensures the spacing between headers remains consistent
   

3. Wrap the text This moves any text down to another line if it’s too long for the cell
   

4. Add a filter Now you can sort and filter that data with ease
   

5. Freeze the heading row When you scroll down your header will remain in place so you don’t lose the context of your data
   

6. Adjust the width of columns This is not essential in every case, but sometimes it’s useful just to tidy things up

4 out of 6 of these actions can be found directly in the formatting ribbon as shown below which makes it a breeze to add them quickly.

The freeze row can be achieved just by hovering your mouse over the line between the column letters and the first row; you’ll see your cursor turn into a hand, so just click and drag this down to row 1.

Alternatively, you can find this in the menu View > Freeze > 1 row

Lastly, adjusting the column width is straightforward, you can either hover over the dividing line to the right of the column header you want to resize; you’ll see a little blue line and an arrow appear.

You can click and drag the column to make it wider or narrower or double-click it to resize to fit the widest content in that column automatically.

These are generally the fundamental steps you should follow when setting up your data to keep things consistent and clean.

There are, of course, plenty of other ways to spruce up your tables but that’s for another day.