How to Zoom-In and Zoom-Out in Google Sheets (Shortcuts)

-- By Sumit

When I started using Google Sheets a few years ago, there was no way to zoom out (or zoom in) in Google Sheets.

Being a skilled Microsoft Excel user, this frustrated me to the core.

After all, how difficult could it be to build a simple functionality to zoom in and out in the worksheet?

Well, I don’t know how hard it is (or isn’t), but the good news is that now you can Zoom-in and Zoom-out in Google Sheets.

It’s not simple and user-friendly as it’s in Excel, but I’ll take it.

In this tutorial, I will show you a couple of methods to Zoom-in and Zoom-out in Google Sheets.

Table of Contents

Using the In-built Zoom functionality

This is a functionality Google Sheets added that allows you to zoom in and out.

Below are the steps to Zoom-In and Zoom-Out in Google Sheets:

Click the Zoom option in the toolbar. This will show a drop-down with various zoom levels.
Select the Zoom level you want. You can select from the existing ones or enter a custom value. Anything less than 100% will make the view smaller and anything more than that will make it bigger.

You also get the same options when you click the File tab and hover the cursor on the Zoom option.

While I am glad we finally have a way to zoom-in and zoom-out in Google Sheets, there are still two drawbacks which I wish weren’t there:

When you zoom one worksheet, it also applies the same zoom to all the other worksheets of the document.
There is no shortcut to change the zoom. So every-time you need to increase/decrease the zoom, you need to follow the above steps.

While nothing can be done about the first drawback (at least at the time of writing this tutorial), there is a way to use a shortcut to zoom-in and zoom-out in Google Sheets.

And it comes with its own limitation!

Shortcut to Zoom-in and Zoom-out in Google Sheets

Another way to zoom in and zoom out in Google Sheets is by changing the zoom of the entire browser.

Although this method is not ideal in many cases, it does have various shortcuts that you can use.

If you’re using a PC, you can use the below shortcuts:

To Zoom In – Control + (hold the control key and press the plus key)
To Zoom Out – Control – (hold the control key and press the minus key)
To restore zoom back to 100% – Control 0 (hold the control key and press the 0 key)

If you’re using a Mac, use the Command key instead of the control key.

In case you’re using Google Sheets (or any other Google Apps) on a smartphone or iPad, you can pinch and change the zoom levels.

If you’re using a mouse with a scroller, you can also use the following – hold the Control key and then change the scroller to change the zoom levels.

You can also change the zoom level by manually changing the value in the browser.

Below are the steps to change the zoom level on Google Sheets in the Chrome browser:

Click the Customize and Control icon in Google Chrome browser (it’s at the top-right part of the browser)
In the options that open, change the Zoom level by clicking on the plus or minus sign

You can also find a similar option to zoom in FireFox and all the other popular browsers.

The drawback with this method is that when you zoom in and zoom out the spreadsheet, it also does the same to the entire browser. This not only changes the zoom level of the cells in the worksheet area but also the menu and toolbar in Google Sheet. Not only this, but it also changes the zoom level of all the other windows you have open in that browser.

You may also like the following Google Sheets tutorials:

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