Google Sheets gets a key visual improvement for data nerds

Google Sheets users have been able to import bar charts and graphs from other providers for a while now. However, if you tried to bring in a 3D bar chart, the app would always render it in 2D, instead. The Sheets team is finally lifting this limitation with an update this week.

Google announced the update in a blog post, adding that users should now be able to import bar graphs from other apps, such as Microsoft Excel, in their full 3D glory to enable “a more seamless experience.”

Sheets users don’t need to flick any toggles to enable this functionality, as it will be available to personal Google accounts as well as Workspace customers. However, it may take until the middle of July to fully appear across all accounts.

This isn’t a game-changing feature by any measure. However, updates like these illustrate that the Sheets team is always finding new ways to improve the user experience, even with small quality-of-life changes.

Aside from this particular inclusion, Google Sheets has been fairly busy in recent weeks implementing more useful features to the app. People who have worked with Sheets (or Excel) in the past will be familiar with formula errors on the app and how annoying they can be. An update two weeks ago effectively made this issue a thing of the past, thanks to Gemini.

Meanwhile, the app also received a major performance boost courtesy of an update in April. In Google’s words, this update introduced 30% faster load times for large spreadsheets and accelerated the process of filtering and applying conditional formatting in large documents by 60%.

While Sheets has lately been getting new Gemini capabilities. just like so many other Google apps, there’s still plenty of improvements to be made that have nothing to do with AI, and it’s good to see the Sheets team addressing one with this week’s feature addition.