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Sheets Tip 289: Smart Chips π
Hi Reader,
Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #289, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!
A big thank you to this week's sponsor who helps keep this newsletter free to read.
I was happy to see Fathom sponsor this week's edition...
...because I use and love their product myself!
I even pull my Fathom data into a Google Sheet so I can track views on my blog posts and know what's working and what's not.
β New videos on YouTube
Check out my newest video tutorials on YouTube:
π₯ My Favorite Google Workspace Workflow! Forms β‘οΈ Sheets β‘οΈ Slidesβ
π₯ Smart Chips in Google Sheets π§ β
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β Other News
I.
βA useful post on how to embed images from Google Drive into your website, in light of recent changes that made the old "/uc" method obsolete.
βEmbed images from Google Drive in your websiteβ
II.
βThis week's episode of the Totally Unscripted show is all about Smart Chips too! (I'd love to say we coordinated, but it was pure coincidence.)
So, if you're interested in learning about what you can do with smart chips and apps script, you'll want to tune in this Wednesday at 3 pm Eastern time:
βTU5.3 - Google Workspace Development with Smart Chips!β
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β Google Sheets Tip #289: Smart Chips
Smart chips were first introduced to Google Sheets in 2021. That was over three years ago!
Since then, Google has added more smart chip types and features β discussed below β but I don't hear much about how folks are using them.
Rating chips were the most recent addition, which we looked at in email #279.
In this email, I want to showcase some features of smart chips and some potential workflows.
What are Smart Chips?
Smart Chips are part of Google's Smart Canvas vision, a collaboration feature designed to reduce the amount of context-switching and make work between files more seamless.
Specifically, Smart Chips enhance our Sheets with external information, beyond the standard data contained in cells.
Smart Chips exist in your Sheet as grey "pills" inside a cell that show a popup when you hover over them.
There are six main smart chips:
- People Chips
- File Chips
- Event Chips
- Place Chips
- Finance Chips
- Rating Chips
There are other "chips" (covered in my new guide) but they are not technically smart chips.
People Chips Workflow
Let's see an example: people chips show you a person's profile picture, email address, and location, and contain action buttons that let you message them or start a Meet call:
You can also extract data from smart chips, using the data extract syntax. For example, here's how to extract a person's email (per their domain profile):
=A1.email(Note some data extract features are only available on certain Workspace and Education tiers. Full details here.)
Now, suppose you were given a list of client email addresses and need to enrich them with details like names, titles, and locations. It's easy and quick using smart chips:
β
Other Smart Chips
Let's see a couple of other smart chips.
Financial entities can be converted into finance chips, which you'll love if you track stocks in your Sheets:
Place names and addresses can be converted into place chips, which show a map preview with a get-directions button:
How Do You Add Smart Chips?
There are three ways to add smart chips:
- Via the menu: Insert > Smart chips
- By right-clicking in a cell and selecting "Smart chips"
- By typing "@" into a cell and opening the Smart Chip menu
Smart Chips and Formulas
Can you create smart chips with formulas?
No, unfortunately not.
But you can nest the data extract syntax inside other formulas, just like a normal range. For example, this QUERY function counts each different file type in column A:
Learn More
See more workflow examples and learn more about smart chips in my newest guide and video:
βThe Complete Guide to Smart Chips in Google Sheetsβ
What do you think?
I'd love to hear how you use (or don't use) smart chips.
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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.
Have a great week!
Cheers,
Ben
P.S. Some of these new Google Meet features are wild! π (parody)
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