People chips in Google Sheets were introduced towards the end of 2021.
They’re a type of smart chip that augments email addresses in your Google Sheets with additional information from your contacts.
When you hover over people chips in Google Sheets, you’re presented with extra information and suggested actions for that contact:
If you work with a lot of email addresses and frequently interact with these folks, then people chips in Google Sheets will be a tremendous help.
They make it super easy to interact, for example, to book meetings, start a chat, or a Google Meet.
People Chip Format
People chips are denoted by a grey “chip” around the name.
It’s subtle, as you can see in this image where A1 is a people chip but A2 is a plain text name:
When you hover over a people chip they show information such as whether that person is typically available, in addition to the contact details and action buttons:
How To Create People Chips in Google Sheets
There are a few different ways to create people chips.
Method 1: Type @
Type @ followed by a name and then select from the list of contacts that show up:
Method 2: From the menu
Highlight a cell or range of cells that contain email addresses. Go to the menu: Insert > People chip
Method 3: Right click option
As with method 2 above, begin by selecting a cell or range of email addresses.
Then right-click to bring up the right-click menu.
Finally, select “Convert to people chip”
Frequently Asked Questions About People Chips In Google Sheets
Is the Sheet shared with people chips?
No, not automatically.
However, you’re prompted to share the Sheet with that person, should you wish to:
Is there Apps Script support?
Whilst the people API is accessible through Apps Script using the Advanced Service, these people chips are not available in the Spreadsheet Service yet.
However, I anticipate they will be part of the Apps Script spreadsheet service in the future.
What happens if my email is not valid?
If the cell does not contain an email or the email is not valid, then you’ll see an error message if you try to convert it to a people chip:
Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments below.
Looks like people chip cells in sheets don’t evaluate to any value.
How can I create a conditional formatting based on a people chip cell? The cell doesn’t evaluate to the people’s name or email address for example “EQ(CHIP_CELL, CHIP_CELL_PERSON_NAME)” will return False.
Yes, you’re right, at the moment they’re just a special format that you can’t interact with using formulas etc.
However, I expect we’ll see this change in the future so that we can interact with them.
How do you control what the people chip displays as. I see it above as a name, but in my google sheet it only shows as an email (Im talking about in the cell before you click to see all the details).
Hi Sage, did you find a solution for this?
how to add 2 people chips in the same cell?
I wonder if Tejas ever found their answer? *wonders*
Tejas, have you found an answer to this!?
Is there a way to make people chips appear automatically instead of email addresses as a sheet is populated (i.e. students filling out a form and having their emails automatically collected)?
Is there a way to change the chip color to anything other than grey? I’d love to have a visual indication of who is responsible for a task in my gantt chart.
Are you able to use Chip in to generate a email notification?