Tired of manually typing dates into your spreadsheet? There's a better way! Google Sheets has a nifty calendar date picker tool that lets you select dates from a popup calendar instead of typing them out by hand.
Check out the gif above for an example. We've got a project timeline that needs completion dates, but who has time to type out "2024-02-14" over and over? Instead, let's add calendar dropdowns to make this process lightning-fast.
To add these calendar dropdowns, first select all the cells where you want date pickers. Then head to the Data menu and select "Data Validation" to open the validation window. Click "Add Rule," set the criteria to "Is valid date," and hit Done. Now whenever you double-click one of these cells, a mini calendar will pop up letting you quickly select any date with just one click!
Pro tip: The calendar picker works for any date format, so no need to worry about MM/DD/YYYY vs DD/MM/YYYY drama.
Unfortunately Excel hasn't caught up with this feature yet (we're looking at you, Microsoft! 👀), but for now Google Sheets has our backs when it comes to speedy date entry.
