Every few months, someone discovers the Google Sheets QUERY function and has the same reaction: why did nobody tell me about this? Here is what it does and why it changes how you work with data.

Have you ever stared at a tangled web of paired columns in your dataset—”Size 1/Value 1,” “Size 2/Value 2,” and so on, wondering how to make sense of it all? It’s a common frustration for anyone ...