How To Create People Chips in Google Sheets

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:

People Chips In Google Sheets

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:

People Chip Format

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:

People Chips Context

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:

People Chip Setup

Method 2: From the menu

Highlight a cell or range of cells that contain email addresses. Go to the menu: Insert > People chip

People Chip In Google Sheets Insert Menu

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”

People Chips Table Set Up

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:

People Chip Access Notification

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:

People Chip Error Message

Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments below.

10 thoughts on “How To Create People Chips in Google Sheets”

  1. 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.

    1. 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.

  2. 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).

  3. 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)?

  4. 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.

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