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Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #320, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

I'm currently experimenting with Google Gemini and ChatGPT to write my Google Sheets formulas and do data analysis. They do a much better job now than they did even just 6 months ago. The way we work with spreadsheets will change fundamentally in the next couple of years.

I'll share results from these experiments with Sheets Insiders members in Thursday's email.

Meanwhile, in today's Google Sheets Tips email, I have another amazing pivot table trick for you. Like last week, it's not well known because it's hidden in the right-click menu.

Check it out below!

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➜ News

I.
​Google is adding third-party smart chips to Sheets, over the coming weeks.

These are smart chips that pull information from third-party apps into Google Sheets. It's all about reducing the distance ( = friction) between your work apps.

As a user of Loom, I'm excited to use a Loom smart chip in my Google Sheet.

​Read more here >>​

➜ Sheets Tip #320:

Following last week's tip, when we looked at date grouping in pivot tables, I want to show you another hidden grouping technique in pivot tables.

It's incredibly useful. And it's easy to use.

Let's start with a pivot table that has text values in the rows, e.g. client names, sales campaigns, exam topics, or, in our example, city names:

What if we want to group them into east and west coast buckets? (Perhaps we have two different sales teams.)

Step 1

Click on the first city in the group, e.g. Boston.

Hold down the Ctrl key (or Cmd on a Mac) and click the other east coast cities: Miami, New York, and Washington, DC

This highlights all these cities together.

Step 2

Right click, making sure to keep our cursor over one of the 4 cities we've selected, and select "Create pivot group":

This will group the 4 cities into a single custom group

Step 3

Click on the new group subhead and type in "East Coast" to rename it:

which then looks like this:

Step 4

Highlight the other rows and repeat the steps to create a second custom group for West Coast:

Over to you... Get creative with your custom grouping!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. What it feels like trying to get together with friends when you all have young families ;)