Google Sheets – How to Organize Data

google sheets

I have separate sheets based on month's of the year.

sheets

Each time I create a new month I copy the template sheet and fill in the data.
Therefore each sheet has the same layout it's only the data that changes.

I'm getting to the point where I would interested in the data over two months combined, right now I would have to go into sheet 1 (Feb-2015) and copy the field say B2 (say it's 5) then go into sheet 2 (March-2015) and copy B2 (it is 7) then add them together, 5 + 7 = 12.

There must be a better way of doing this? Can I combine all of the sheets then create some type of selector for the month? I'm not sure what to do and also not sure what 'spreadsheet keywords' I need to Google to find what I want?

Best Answer

Put all the data for all the months into ONE sheet. Use a column called Month to keep track of what month each row is for.

When you want to see one month's data only, click in the data area, then choose Data > Filter from the menus. This puts a small drop-down arrow in the header cells, by clicking on this you can control what filters are applied.

There is an example of this approach here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ro-wEdk-Gvw0v-UltYlbjf4EMLq5sPeJYhM1zKMblt4/edit?usp=sharing