Google Sheets’ new ‘conditional notifications’ easily keep track of small changes

Google Sheets now offers conditional notifications, a new feature that lets users set up rules to receive an email notification when certain spreadsheet cells change in any document where they have editing access.

From now on, users can set rules in Google Sheets to receive notifications when certain criteria are met, like an updated column value or changes to a specific range of cells.

Sheets recently snagged a few features Excel users have had for years, like letting users create easily formatted tables in Sheets and adding smooth scrolling. Now, with conditional notifications, Sheets adds a feature associated with project management tools like Airtable. It also seems pretty easy to set up compared to Excel, which also has more broadly triggered email notifications but might involve some VBA coding and Power Automate to get these kinds of specific updates.

Examples Google gave for conditional notifications include getting an alert when somebody changes the status or owner of a particular task in a project tracker or when a number drops below a certain amount in a forecast analysis.

The notification email from Google will include information about who made the change. You can also set up notifications for others by adding their email address while setting the rules.

Some people started gaining access to the feature on June 4th, but it may take longer to arrive on your Workspace account (Business, Enterprise, or Education — free personal accounts are not included). Google says its 15-day gradual roll will reach users who are on the default release schedule starting June 18th.