Friday, December 29, 2017
Convert old Google Drive Sheets to the new format for offline editing
Convert old Google Drive Sheets to the new format for offline editing
Google plans on automatically switching over all your files to the new Sheets format at some unspecified point in the future. But for now, Google suggests the easiest workaround is to copy-and-paste your old spreadsheet into a new file using the updated version of Sheets.
Power of the desktop
To turn an old spreadsheet into a new spreadsheet, thus making it available for offline editing, were simply going to download and then re-upload the file.
First hover over the Test3 spreadsheet in Google Drive and then right-click it. In the context menu that opens select "Download..."
A pop-up window will appear. Make sure "Microsoft Excel .xlsx" is selected in the drop-down menu so that an Excel file arrives on your desktop. Once youre ready, click the Download button.
The next part is very simple: Just grab the file that is now on your PC (probably at the download bar at the bottom of Chrome, or in the downloads folder) and drag-and-drop it over your Google Drive page in Chrome. Test3 will now be uploaded to Google Drive as an Excel spreadsheet.
Convert to new Sheets format
Once its done uploading, just right-click the new Test3 Excel file and select Open with... > Google Sheets. That will export the file to the new Google Sheets format�meaning youre good to go for offline editing.
Dont let the number of steps fool you: Once youve got the hang of it this process, it takes mere seconds over a broadband connection. More importantly, it means no fumbling with copying and pasting vast pools of data from one spreadsheet to another.
