Top 5 Best Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Data Studio
- Precise Element Placement (Shift + Arrow)
- Quick Layer Adjustment (Ctrl + Arrow)
- Group & Ungroup Elements (Ctrl + G & Ctrl + Shift + G)
- Instant Data Source Refresh (Ctrl + Shift + E)
- Efficient Unselect (Ctrl + Left Click)
Hi, and welcome to another guide in this Google Data Studio series. Today, we will learn about keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio. There are so many keyboard shortcuts that are general, such as ctrl + c = copy, ctrl + v = paste, ctrl + a = select all, and so on. These keyboard shortcuts are universal and work with almost every screen, on the web, on tools, on native applications, and so on. But, today, we are going to learn some exciting and super cool keyboard shortcuts that are only in Google Data Studio, and they help us by saving a lot of time, and energy.
An average user prefers to press multiple keys from the keyboard, instead of holding the mouse taking it to a specific position by rotating on a specific angle and then pressing a click. Both of the ways of doing anything are quite similar and can be interchangeably used, but keyboard shortcuts are more accurate, if you press ctrl + c it will always copy, but clicking sometimes can be wrong, we mistakenly click on the other button or position, and that’s irritating for a user. So, with that said, I have brought some excellent keyboard shortcuts that will blow your mind and will help you while working with Google Data Studio.
Importance of learning Keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio
We also love keyboard shortcuts in our day-to-day tasks. We also use ctrl + c instead of right click and selecting the copy option. Keyboard shortcuts make our tasks quicker and we have to put in less effort. Keyboard shortcuts are memorized when we keep on using them, and after a good time, we are used to using the keyboard shortcuts, and it makes our work most fast.
In Google Data Studio, we have so many keyboard shortcuts, not as many as we had in Google Sheets, but still, when working with charts we don’t want to use a touch-pad or mouse most of the time, keyboard shortcuts look more professional while dragging mouse looks like a noob.
Today, I will teach you some good handy keyboard shortcuts that will help you in your regular job. Whether you use Google Data Studio as your primary job, for your projects, or even for a hobby project, these keyboard shortcuts are going to help you a lot.
Keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio
In this section, we will learn some general keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio. I am using a table pattern in this article to provide all these shortcuts very cleanly and easily without any confusion, I am including all these shortcuts for two popular operating systems, Windows and Mac. So, let’s get started.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Top 5 Keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio
The above list is good for reference but for practical usage to save time and effort here is a top-five list for you. As you have seen some of the above keyboard shortcuts are very basic, and you already know and use them but some others are mind-blowing. Here, I will cut those and will tell you about the top five keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio.
Moving Things 1 Pixel – (Shift + Arrow)
When you create your report, you have so many elements, objects, and charts in it, and for a perfect report setup, you need to keep the things in their perfect places. Moving an element by selecting and then dragging the mouse is a more than a classical way to organize the elements on a page. In Google Data Studio, we need this feature very frequently so we use a keyboard shortcut, simply select any element, and then press the left, right, up, or down arrow to move the element by 1 pixel in the respective direction. It keeps the dimensions accurate and sharp to make a pixel-perfect report even when zoomed in. Additionally, you have guides, guide are thin lines that tell you if you are in the same direction as the other element, or misdirected. This helps a lot in the alignment of the elements.
Bring Elements Forward/Backward (Cmd + Arrow)
When you have so many elements on a single page, you need to have multi-dimensional. Sometimes, you want to have your object right on the front, and sometimes on the back, you can control this by right click and select an option from send backward, bring forward, send to back, and bring to front. But here we are on Google Data Studio, and it never disappoints us. We have four quick keyboard shortcuts for this feature. We can use it to increase the workflow by 30%.
Group & Ungroup Elements (Cmd + G) & (Cmd + Shift + G)
When you are done with a specific section of your report, you may need to group elements to perform actions contiguous to them, for example, if you have created two tables on the top side of your report, now you may want to align their center, doing this to each table will make both tables one over another, but first grouping them and then center align, will treat both of them as a single entity and you will get the perfect center. There can be more reasons to use group and ungroup entities. Amazing is that we have extremely quick keyboard shortcuts for group and ungroup. We can use them to quickly group elements, and also to ungroup them. It’s my personal favorite when making a bigger report.
Refresh Data Source (Ctrl + Shift + E)
There are some errors and bugs in Data Studio caused due to data source, or connector, we so many times need to reconnect or refresh our data to avoid these errors, so we need to make a journey and go to Resource > Manage added data sources, and then we click on refresh fields to refresh the data source. But now we have a 100 times better solution, and a quicker one as well. So, from today, we will only use Ctrl + Shift + E to refresh data source quickly on the main screen of our Data Studio
Unselect item from selection (Ctrl + Left Click)
We sometimes have so tightly packed elements on our page and we need to select most of them, so to unselect, we can first select all using Ctrl + A, then we can press Ctrl + left click on an element to unselect it from the group. This is also a universal keyboard shortcut, but it’s very useful in Google Data Studio.
Conclusion
Wrapping up keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio, we have learned so many almost all keyboard shortcuts in Google Data Studio, and for your ease, I have summarized them into the top 5. I hope you like all these keyboard shortcuts, and that you have successfully tried them on your data. I will see you soon with another helpful tutorial. Keep learning with Office Demy.