Why Google Sheets’ Latest Update Is Both a Blessing and a Curse

I have some bittersweet feelings about one of Google’s newest enhancements to the Sheets product. Removing Duplicates? Trimming whitespace? Amazing, bravo, thank u. But here’s why support for Excel shortcuts scares me (there’s a sentence you don’t hear everyday).

For 4 years, I taught a course on Excel shortcuts at Nielsen and NYU called “Page Down for What”. Not only was this a defining moment for my career, it was (and still is) my favorite pun to date. The title was a reference to the netherworld of the Windows keyboard one could take advantage of when using Excel (like Ctrl + Pg Dn to jump to end of document). Once I got the hang of these, I became so fast at working with the program that my coworkers can’t let me to work next to them without making fun of my loud keyboard mashing.

I have no inside knowledge, but I bet this was prioritized at Google because they are finally coming for Office/Excel by name and picking a fight — there’s even a training tab in Sheets now called “Switching from Microsoft”. About time y’all! So this feature allows Excel whizzes to feel comfortable.

What’s the Problem? I don’t think we ought to be encouraging users to use Excel shortcuts. My Biz Ops counterpart Alexis, when designing Sheets training for BuzzFeed, always wisely says that there are several ways to do things, and if you let people form habits up front, they’ll likely never quit them. That’s why we have an entire clusters of analysts still running on…