How to change the currency symbol in Google Sheets
Google Sheets hosts several expense and budget tracking spreadsheets. Most of them choose a default currency, but if you want to change it, we've got you covered. Here's how to change the currency symbol in Google Sheets.
We recently started using one of these spend tracking spreadsheets on Google Sheets and surprisingly the currency we chose was the British Pound. You can easily change this to US dollars or other currencies.
If you've uploaded a template with a different currency, you'll need to make sure that all instances of the currency have been changed. Failure to do so may result in miscalculations or other problems.
In this section:
Manually change the currency symbol in Google Sheets
This method is a bit cumbersome, but it allows you to change the currency symbol quite easily in Google Sheets. You will need to open any worksheet first and then select all the cells that contain the currency you want to change. If the entire sheet has only one currency, you can just use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + a (or Command + a on Mac).
With the relevant cells selected, click on the "123" button that is next to the font selection option.
Select "More formats".
Click on "More currencies".
Use the search box to find your currency and select it.
Click the currency format drop-down menu to select the format you prefer. You will see choices like $ 1, $ 000, $ 1, etc. Choose one of them.
Now click on "Apply".
This will change the currency symbol in a worksheet. You will have to repeat this process with all the other worksheets to change the format there too. This means that if your Google Sheets document contains individual spreadsheets like income, expenses, etc., you will need to manually change the currency symbol in each of them.
Set the default currency for any document in Google Sheets
If you're creating a new spreadsheet in Google Sheets, you can quickly set the default currency for that document.
Notes: This method does not work with models that have their own default currencies. It works best with newer Google Sheets documents you're working on.
To set a default currency for your spreadsheet, click "File" in Google Sheets.
Choose "Spreadsheet Settings".
Go to the "General" tab. You will see a drop-down menu with the name of a country under the subtitle “Regional Settings”. Click on this drop-down menu.
Select the country whose currency you want to use.
Finally, just click on the green “Save settings” button. This will set the document's default currency to whatever you want.
Set the default currency for your Google account
If you want to make sure that your preferred currency is always set as the default currency in Google Sheets, you can make the change directly in your Google Account. To do this, log into your Google account and click on your profile picture in the top right corner.
Choose "Manage your Google account".
Click on "Manage your data and personalization" in the Privacy and personalization section.
Select the pencil icon next to your preferred language.
Use the search box to select the primary language of the country whose currency you want to choose. In our case, we want to select the US dollar as the default currency. We therefore chose “English”.
Now select the correct country. For US dollars, the choice is “United States”.
Click the "Select" button to complete the process.
You can also find out how to change the date format in Google Sheets here.
