Last updated on May 20th, 2023 at 05:59 pm

When you start creating a spreadsheet from scratch, you may have a good idea what the final layout of that spreadsheet will entail. In the case of smaller and simpler sheets, there might only be a few columns of data to work with, making it unlikely that something new will arise which dictates the addition of another piece of information.

But you may find yourself in a situation where you need to add a column into the middle or an already-existing spreadsheet, and manually moving the data over might feel impractical. Fortunately Google Sheets offers you a way to selectively insert a column to the left or right of a column that is already in the sheet.

How to Add a Column in Google Sheets

The steps in this article were performed in the Web browser version of Google Sheets. This guide assumes that you currently have an existing spreadsheet and that you wish to add a column in between two of your existing columns.

Step 1: Go to your Google Drive at https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive and open the spreadsheet file into which you want to add a new column.

Step 2: Click a column heading to the left or right of where you wish to insert the new column.

Step 3: Click the Insert tab at the top of the window.

how to add a column in google sheets spreadsheet

Step 4: Select the Column left option to add a column to the left of the currently-selected column, or select the Column right option to add one to the right of the currently-selected column.

Do you need to simultaneously change the width of many of your columns? Learn how to change the width of multiple columns in Google Sheets and quickly give uniform widths to many of the columns in your spreadsheet.