Google Sheets adds quick cell and range navigation with new ‘name box’ feature

One of the most frustrating things for new Chromebook owners who are accustomed to Microsoft Excel on Windows is coming to Google Sheets as an alternative, and missing out on a few features that its competition did well. One of the things that I heard a lot in stores was that customers wanted a way to quickly navigate around cells and ranges in Sheets and felt frustrated that they couldn’t.

That’s all changing now thanks to a new update to the service which adds a ‘range name box’ which will allow you to quickly jump directly to coordinates and named ranges in a sheet! Previously, all you could do to jump to an active cell or range that you had highlighted was to navigate to it manually – talk about inefficient.

The new option can be found on the top left side of the sheet just above the A1 cell and houses a dropdown menu for quickly accessing, managing, and creating new named ranges. Why it took Google this long to add something that power users have so desperately wanted is beyond me, but it’s a welcome addition, nonetheless.

You can get your hands on this starting now and if you don’t see it yet, it will be rolled out to you within the next few days. If you have a Scheduled Release Domain, you can expect it within two weeks of January 25, 2021. I’m happy to announce that this is yet another Workspace feature that’s coming directly to regular, non-Workspace Google accounts as well!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new range name box feature in the comments below. Are you a power user? Will you be utilizing this, or is there something you’d much rather have that would solidify your experience with Google Sheets? The feature isn’t exactly a batch of new keyboard shortcuts to help you zip around the sheet, but I still think it’s cool. Sound off!

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