Google Sheets adds several menu enhancements including icons to make things easier to find

Sheets has a ton of options and many of them are found directly in its menu system. These have notoriously been difficult to find, and in an effort to simplify the web app for data management, Google is enhancing several things about said menus.

In a new Keyword blog post, the company has outlined its efforts to make these dropdowns more visually appealing and accessible. It hopes to make devices with smaller screens even easier to navigate in the process, and as a result, some menu items may have been moved a bit to increase their findability. One example of this is that you can now freeze a column using the right-click menu instead of having to move all the way to the top.

The menu bar and right-click menus have been shortened to fit better on your screen, and to prevent elements from going off of the screen and being hidden, descriptions of certain items have been shortened for faster recognition, and overall, the File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Date, Tools, Extensions, Help, and Accessibility menus have all received smaller tweaks.

The biggest change though comes in the form of new icons to the left of all menu items! It’s obvious that visual elements make things easier to find, and it’s a wonder to me that these didn’t exist prior. Sheets has always been more utilitarian in nature, but as Google’s services are used by more types of people during the pandemic, and as they’re adopted into various workflows in various industries, the company has clearly realized that they need to simplify things a bit.

Both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains should already start seeing these enhanced menus appear for them and their organization as it began on the 26th of October. If you’re not yet seeing it, and have a Google Workspace account, G Suite Basic or Business account, or even a personal Google account, then you should over the next 7 days as the company is already halfway through its rollout.