This post is about the People (Smart) Chip, the recent update to Google Sheets.

We will discuss two points. How to insert People Chips and how to convert the People Chips back to email addresses in Google Sheets

Google introduced the People Chip in Sheets spreadsheet program at the end of last year (2021). But I didn’t post about this feature solely because of one reason.

There was no option to revert People Chips to their email addresses without affecting other changes to the Sheets.

It was like getting a feature to format a range of cells but no option to clear those formatting.

Now things are changed. We can convert People Chips back to their email addresses.

Purpose

People Chips are email IDs (texts) formatted differently to hold more information about the contact.

The background of the converted email IDs, not the cell color, will be highlighted (greyed out) to differentiate them from the non-converted ones.

I don’t know why Google has named it so. Maybe due to the chip shape formatting.

These Chips will help you view more information about your email contacts in cells, such as your recent interaction with them, calendar events, or a quick way to communicate with them.

When you hover over or click on it in a cell, you will find more/underlying information.

Below you can learn how to insert or convert the People Chips back to email addresses in Google Sheets.

How to Insert People (Smart) Chips in Google Sheets

You can insert People Chips in the following two ways in Google Sheets.

Click on a blank cell and type the @ symbol, or select Insert > People chip, followed by a letter(s), number(s), or symbol(s).

Then select a contact from the drop-down list under PEOPLE or GROUP.

Here is the second method.

In this, you must first type the required email address in a cell.

Then select Insert > Convert to people chip.

You may sometimes encounter an error while doing so! I’ll explain.

Assume you are trying the above step in cell A2. If the entered email ID is not in your contact, you will see the following error.

Cell A2 contains an invalid email.

To solve it, do as follows.

1. Open the Contacts app.
2. Select “Create contact” and add the name, email address, and other details.
3. Save the changes.

You may re-type the email address in cell A2 (as per example) and insert the People Chip, as mentioned above.

Finally, let’s learn to convert People Chips back to email addresses in Google Sheets.

How to Revert People Chips to Emails Addresses in Google Sheets

Earlier, there was no option to retrieve email addresses from People Chips in Google Sheets.

The only workaround was to manually copy the email addresses, one by one, from each chip.

Google has introduced a new menu option to revert People Chips to email addresses.

How?

1. Select the cell or cell range that contains the People (Smart) Chips.
2. Right-click to open the shortcut menu.
3. Select View more cell actions > Remove smart chip.

That’s it! But still, there is no formula option available for the same.

That’s all. Thanks for the stay. Enjoy!

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