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However, it would be worth mentioning where your data came from, what major steps or tests you did, and how you did them (e.g. This is example is deliberately detailed, so I wouldn’t suggest you need to create something like this everytime: It doesn’t need to be super long, just enough detail to allow you or someone else enough information to understand and recreate the analysis. There’ll come a day when you’re glad of some notes about where your data came from, what assumptions you made, what calculations you decided to do, and how you did them! However, it’s absolutely one of the best practices for working with data. This is often left as an afterthought or worse, just not done at all. It’s generally a good idea if you’re sharing the Sheet and don’t want anyone to be able to see all your workings to get to the final result (maybe you deleted confidential data for example). It’s also worth mentioning that making a copy of a Sheet means the new copy does not have the version history, which can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on your situation. It’s definitely not necessary for everything, just your mission-critical stuff.
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On the other hand, however, your account could still get hacked or a colleague could (accidentally) delete a crucial file, and you could lose data that way.įor anything that’s really important, it’s worth making a copy, either in a different google account if you have one, and/or offline (as a CSV or excel file). You can restore files from trash, although once you’ve deleted them from trash they really are gone for good (I believe there’s an exception for admins of school G Suite accounts however). And you can rely on version history to go back in time to an earlier version of your Sheet should you need to. Google has so much redundancy built in, your data should be safe from getting corrupted or lost. On the one hand yes, there shouldn’t be a need to backup your Google Sheets. Surely this is redundant in the age of cloud data, right? Here’s an example from my Drive, with folders for each course I’m working on, and sub-folders within them: Files can move from one folder to the next (or be copied from one folder to the next) as the project progresses. A big piece of that is good data management, and that starts with implementing a well-organized, logical and efficient folder structure.Īs your projects grow in size, it becomes more and more crucial to keep your Google Sheets organized in a meaningful way.Īt a minimum, you’ll have a top level project folder and inside that, you’ll want separate folders for your raw datasets, for your analysis and for your final deliverables. Projects are more likely to be successful when there is good communication and a good organizational structure.
#NAME FOR THE GOOGLE DOCS GOOGLE DRIVE GOOD SPREADSHEETS HOW TO#
Learn how to make data-driven decisions using Google Sheets in the Data Analysis with Google Sheets course 18 best practices for working with data