Author: Adam DuVander

Google Sheets is a popular Excel alternative for a variety of reasons. Whether you’re a student who was advised to take advantage of Google Sheet’s auto-save over Excel before Excel followed suit with the same feature or a member of the workforce who finds Sheets more intuitive than Microsoft’s option, there are always new Google Sheets tips and tricks that could improve your workflow.

It seems worth a focus on Google Sheets since we’ve previously covered a lot of Excel tips:

• 5 Excel Tips From the Guy Who Built It
• Simplify Complicated Data in Excel Spreadsheets
• Use an Excel Pivot Table to Count and Sum Values
• The Complete Guide to Conditional Formatting in Excel

Many of those can be adjusted to function with Google Sheets, but in this post, we’ll look at three tips for Google Sheets exclusively. And if you use it as often as we do, you might find yourself employing them every day.

1. Capture Data with Ease

This first tip is for Google Sheets users who don’t have time to spare (which, let’s face it, is everybody). Instead of painstakingly copying and pasting data from a webpage, you can easily make Google Sheets grab your desired information all at once and display it in the spreadsheet.

We’ll do this via =IMPORTHTML. With this formula, we can enter the site URL with a table we wish to manipulate, in addition to specifying the table and whether it’s the first or second table. For example:

=IMPORTHTML("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_the_Great_Lakes", "table",4)

These are the results. But for those who prefer to steer clear of formulas, an alternative option is an extension like TableCapture for Chrome. Once you’ve captured your data, let’s jump into how to work with it offline.

2. Work Offline with the Google Drive Offline Extension

Whether you’re an international jet setter who finds airport Wifi painfully slow or you’re a homebody who just wants to be prepared, the tools you use for work and personal projects should be able to go anywhere. But because Google Sheets is known as a web-based spreadsheet application, you may think you’re out of luck if you don’t turn your iPhone into a hotspot.

Thankfully that’s not the case when you enable the Google Drive Offline Extension for always accessible data. Sheets offline allows you to easily create, view, and edit files while disconnected from Wifi or data. And while the focus is using Google Sheets offline mode, the same extension also enables you to work offline in Google Slides and use Google Docs offline. Note you must set this up while you still have access to the internet. Then, follow the steps below.

1. Add the Google Docs Offline extension to Chrome
2. Navigate to Google Drive, click on the Settings gear in the top right, and select Settings
3. Remain in the General section to check Offline, and you’re done!

Now that you’ve taken your work offline, it may be time to level up your data in perhaps the most visual way.

3. Make It Visual With a Map

This last tip is for all the visual learners out there, whether you’re using Sheets offline or not. More than capturing and accessing your data in Google Sheets, visualizing your data is also within reach. Via a chart subtype, you can make a Map of your country, continent, or regional data—all within Google Sheets. Here’s how.

• Under Insert, opt for Chart
• Click the dropdown for Chart type and scroll down until you see the two Map options
• Select either Geo chart or Geo chart with markers
  • Note: for latitude and longitude data, the marker option works best.

You can pick and choose the Chart style of your map (Background color, Font, Chart border color) and narrow down your region of focus (the World, Europe, the U.S., etc.), but that’s about as specific as a Google Sheets map can get. So, for an alternative that’s more customizable, just copy and post your data from Google Sheets into a free online mapping tool.

BatchGeo Is Made for Maps

The Google Sheets Chart-Map hybrid is useful when you need to remain in the same platform as your data. However, it doesn’t always offer the insights you could get with a tool that’s dedicated to map-making, which can be as easy as copy and paste. Only with such a tool can you get clickable markers that show info window boxes, like those on our map of Santa Monica Mechanics below.

View Santa Monica Mechanics (With Images) in a full screen map

Click on a map marker to reveal each customized info window box. These can even include your chosen images. Get started with a quick copy-paste of your Google Sheets data into BatchGeo for clickable markers with info window boxes now.

U.S. presidents rely heavily on their second-in-command, the vice president. Oftentimes, vice-presidential candidates are selected to balance the ticket. Diversity in race, gender (as with the 2020 election), age, and geography can increase an administration’s chances of winning the election. As such, let’s take a look at the birthplaces of past U.S. vice presidents to see which state most V.P.s have been from and which states are without ties to a vice president. Additionally, birth dates and age ranges at inauguration are included on the map below.

View Birthdates and birthplaces of U.S. vice presidents in a full screen map

The data displayed on the map is from the List of vice presidents of the United States by place of primary affiliation on Wikipedia, though we used some Excel skills to note the age of each vice president when they first took office. You can sort the map by that information or if you’re more interested in where each V.P. started Biden their time, note the geographic facts about the vice presidency below.

Most Vice Presidents Were Born in This State

As we learned from the map of US president births and burials, eight presidents were born in Virginia, which is also incidentally nicknamed the Mother of Presidents. Additionally, seven presidents are buried in Virginia, so the state tops in both births and burials. Let’s see if the same state that produced the most U.S. presidents also resulted in the most V.P.s.

Home state	Number of VPs
New York	8
Virginia	3
Vermont	3
Ohio	3
Massachusetts	3
Kentucky	3
Indiana	3
Texas	2
Pennsylvania	2
North Carolina	2
New Jersey	2
Nebraska	2
Maine	2
California	2
South Dakota	1
South Carolina	1
New Hampshire	1
Missouri	1
Minnesota	1
Maryland	1
Kansas	1
Iowa	1
District of Columbia	1
Grand Total	49

New York has been the home state of eight past Vice Presidents. These are George Clinton (the 4th V.P.), Daniel D. Tompkins (6th), Martin Van Buren (8th), Millard Fillmore (12th), William A. Wheeler (19th), Schuyler Colfax (17th), Theodore Roosevelt (25th), and James S. Sherman (27th). Additionally, New York City is the only city where more than one vice president was born. Both the 17th and 25th V.P.s were born in the Big Apple: Schuyler Colfax and Theodore Roosevelt, respectively.

The other 49 states have each borne three or fewer V.P.s. Explore them via the map—you may note the only Western state that can claim vice presidents is California. Let’s see which other states lack V.P. representation.

States With Zero Vice Presidential Ties

Twenty-two states have been the early home of past vice presidents, leaving 28 without a tie to a V.P. This includes 10 of the 11 Western states (and Alaska and Hawaii), with California being the only exception.

Three Southwestern states lack a connection to a vice president: Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. The same can be said for four states in the Midwest including North Dakota, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Eight Southeastern states of West Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida are also sans a V.P. birth. Additionally, three states in the Northeast are in the same boat: Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Delaware. Now let’s switch gears from birthplace to birth month.

Birth Months and Ages of the V.P.s

A heartbeat away from the presidency means that V.P.s must meet the requirements, including the minimum age of 35. There are political reasons for candidates to choose either youthful or elder statesman running mates. But astrologists might also consider their Zodiac sign. We’ve included both age and birth month in this section.

Vice Presidential Age Ranges

John Adams and Kamala Harris may both be V.P.s with October birthdays, but there’s also a 229-year age gap between the two. Let’s take a look at some more notable age differences between the V.P.s.

The youngest U.S. vice president to take office was just 36 years old. That youngster was John C. Breckinridge, who held the position for one term between 1857 and 1861. On the other hand, Alben W. Barkley was the oldest V.P. to ever hold office. He first took the oath at the ripe age of 72 in 1949. As for the average age of all the vice presidents, it’s about 55 (55.163 to be exact).

Popular Veep Birth Months

Unlike with the 50 U.S. states, all 12 months of the year are represented, though one month only has a single V.P. October is the birth month of eight vice presidents. These include John Adams (the 1st V.P.), Richard M. Johnson (9th), Chester A. Arthur (20th), Adlai E. Stevenson (23rd), Theodore Roosevelt (25th), James S. Sherman (27th), Henry A. Wallace (33rd), and Kamala Harris (49th).

Six V.P.s each were born in January and July. For January, it’s Millard Fillmore (12th), John C. Breckinridge (14th), Charles Curtis (31st), Richard Nixon (36th), Walter Mondale (42nd), and Dick Cheney (46th). Then, George Clinton (4th), Elbridge Gerry (5th), George M. Dallas (11th), Calvin Coolidge (29th), Gerald Ford (40th), and Nelson Rockefeller (41st) were all born in July.

March and June bore five Vice Presidents. The March births were John C. Calhoun (7th), John Tyler (10th), Schuyler Colfax (17th), Thomas R. Marshall (28th), and Al Gore (45th). June saw Daniel D. Tompkins (6th), William A. Wheeler (19th), Garret Hobart (24th), George H. W. Bush (43rd), and Mike Pence (48th) born.

The remaining months have under five V.P. births, the lowest of which is September with the birth of just one vice president: Thomas A. Hendricks.

More Political Maps Made With BatchGeo

Below is a list of related maps you can create online for free with BatchGeo.

• Births and Burials of US Presidents
• The President Abroad: International Travels Of U.S. Presidents
• Presidential Assassination Attempts Mapped
• 2020 Presidential Primary Dates & Locations on a Map

Take a look, or make a map of your own so that you too can get visual insights into any dataset.

Ships have been sailing the five North American freshwater lakes known as the Great Lakes since the 17th century. Naturally, this means that like the 569 shipwrecks in international waters, a number of ships have sunk there. While many were never found, making the exact number of Great Lakes shipwrecks somewhat of a mystery, plenty of others’ whereabouts are known, like that of the 1975 sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald.

In our coverage of the shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, we’ll go over the deadliest lake of the five, along with the months when ships sank most frequently, and the most disastrous years. Learn more about the stories in the wreckages on the map below.

View Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes in a full screen map

Of 396 total ships that have gone down in the Great Lakes, only one hundred or so have identifiable locations. Find those on the map, which was made from the List of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. You can sort by lake or sunk date/month/year. Let’s dive into which of the Great Lakes has sunk the most ships.

The Deadliest Great Lake: Lake Erie Shipwrecks

To start, let’s look at which of the five Great Lakes is home to the most shipwrecks—the ones with precise coordinates and those that are more mysterious.

• Lake Erie (137 shipwrecks)
• Lake Ontario (89)
• Lake Superior (69)
• Lake Michigan (60)
• Lake Huron (41)

As noted above, the waters of Lake Erie have claimed the most ships. What’s surprising is that Lake Erie is the smallest Great Lake in volume. However, as it’s also the shallowest, this may be what causes so many ships to sink. 78 of Lake Erie’s shipwrecks can be pinpointed on a map, such as PS Anthony Wayne, the oldest steamboat wreck (sunk in 1850) on the Great Lakes. On the other hand, 59 wrecks lie in unknown places in the lake.

Another surprise, Lake Ontario, the second-smallest volume-wise and smallest in area, is home to the second-most shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. Most of these (83 to be exact) sank at unidentified points. The six known wrecks include HMS Speedy, St. Peter, the confusingly-named Unknown, William Johnston, HMS St Lawrence, and HMS Wolfe.

In the deepest and largest lake by volume, there have been 69 total Lake Superior shipwrecks. Of these, 55 are visitable while, for 14, their exact coordinates remain unknown. And though Lake Michigan has only the second-largest volume and is third-largest by area, 60 Lake Michigan shipwrecks have taken place there.

Lake Huron, the third-largest by volume and second largest in area, has been much kinder to sailors traversing its waves. Just 41 ships have gone down there over the years.

Altogether, the bottoms of these five lakes contain a grand total of 396 shipwrecks, though, for 229, the exact location remains unknown. And now that we know where these ships sunk (most were Lake Erie shipwrecks), we can take a look at when they went down.

Wreck Dates: Months & Years

Of the 199 wrecks with recorded sunk months, nearly 30% took place in the same winter month. See for yourself on the table below.

Month	Number of shipwrecks
November	58
October	43
September	22
May	17
June	16
August	13
July	9
December	9
April	8
January	3
February	1
March	0

The Great Lakes’ November waters should have sailors weary. Just over 29% of all recorded ships sunk in that month alone throughout the years. These include two in Lake Ontario, six in Lake Erie, 16 each in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and the 18 Lake Superior shipwrecks.

And October is not too far behind in the tally of boat sinking. Three shipwrecks from Lake Ontario, along with Huron’s and Superior’s eight, Lake Erie’s 11, and 13 Lake Michigan shipwrecks add up to 43.

Contrary to what began to look like a winter trend, December, January, and February each have less than 10. Sailors should also feel the safest going across any—or all—the Great Lakes in March. No ship from 1780 to 2000 has ever gone down in that timeframe.

Years

As for years, 1905 was a deadly one for ships: exactly 15 sank that year. Among those, one sank in Lake Erie, while two each went down in Huron and Michigan, and 10 in Lake Superior.

The year with the second-most wrecks was 1913, when 12 ships went down: one each in Lakes Erie and Superior, two in Michigan, and eight in Huron. Most were a result of the Great Storm of 1913, which occurred in November of that year.

See the names of the ships that sank during these years when you sort the map by the “Sunk year” group.

Now, both of these years were quite a long time ago. The only year this century with a single Great Lakes wreck was 2000 when tour boat True North II sank, killing two students in Georgian Bay, Lake Huron.

You should now set sail to more water-related content, like the busiest ports worldwide or every US shark attack fatality since 1900.