Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Stay up to date on important changes in your Google Sheets

Update

[June 24, 2024]: We have updated the rollout timelines for this feature. See the Rollout section below for more details.
This announcement was part of Google Cloud Next ‘24. Visit the Workspace Blog to learn more about the next wave of innovations in Workspace, including enhancements to Gemini for Google Workspace.

What’s changing

In order to provide greater visibility into spreadsheet changes most relevant to your workflow and help enable more efficient team communication, we’re introducing conditional notifications. 

These allow you to create rules in spreadsheets that send email notifications when certain criteria are met. When a specific change is made, such as a column value change or a specific range of cell changes, you will receive an email notification with alerts of what occurred in the spreadsheet and who made the update. You also have the option to configure the notifications for others by inputting their email addresses during the notification setup. 

Email notification of changes in a spreadsheet

Who’s impacted 

End users 


Why it matters 

Conditional notifications keep you and your stakeholders up to date on recent changes within a spreadsheet. You can set rules to notify you (or others) when, for example:
  • Tasks have changed status or owner in a project tracker 
  • Certain items reach a certain number of stock in an inventory tracker 
  • A number drops below a certain value in a forecast analysis 

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • If you own or have edit-access to a Sheet, you can set notifications when: 
      • A range of cells changes value 
      • A range of cells matches a particular condition 
    • To set conditional notifications, open your spreadsheet, go to Tools > Conditional notifications > Add rule. You can also right-click directly on a spreadsheet and select Conditional notifications. 
    • Note: The rules are assigned default names automatically. However, you can update the name of the rule by utilizing the text editor. Visit the Help Center to learn how to use conditional notifications.
Adding a rule to set up Conditional notifications in Google Sheets


Rollout pace 

  • Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 4, 2024 
  • Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 1, 2024 

Availability

Available for Google Workspace: 
  • Business Standard, Plus 
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, Plus 
  • Education Plus 
  • Enterprise Essentials 

Resources