Event chips connect Google Sheets to the details of events in Google Calendar. Imagine seeing who you are meeting with, where, and for how long, all inside Google Sheets.

Event Chips are a part of Google’s Smart Canvas initiative along with others, such as people and place chips.

Contents

1 When Event Chips Work Well (And When They Don’t)
2 Inserting Event Chips into Google Sheets
3 Appearance of Chips in your Spreadsheet
4 Data Extraction
5 Example
6 Event Chips vs. Calendar Importer
7 Conclusion
8 Videos

When Event Chips Work Well (And When They Don’t)

Event Chips are perfect for:

✅ Referencing a few individual events in your spreadsheet

✅ Quick lookups of event details

✅ Linking specific calendar items in project trackers

However, Event Chips have significant limitations:

❌Manual insertion required for each event (no bulk import)

❌Can be finicky and unreliable with large datasets

❌Limited to events you manually select

❌No historical data exports

❌Requires Google Workspace for full data extraction features

Inserting Event Chips into Google Sheets

Before you insert an Event Chip, you must have events in Google Calendar. You can select your events using the contents of the event Summary field, as shown in the image below.

The event summary pointed out amongst the event details — The Event Summary in Google Calendar

Once you have created your calendar events, you will be ready to make a chip. There are two methods for inserting Event Chips into Google Sheets:

Option 1: Using the Insert menu: Click on the Insert menu and select Smart chips > Calendar events. Choose the event from the pop-up menu.

Inserting an Event Chip using the menus — Inserting an Event Chip with the Menu

Option 2: Using the “@” key: Type the “@” key and then start typing the event’s name. A list of suggested events will appear. Select the event you want to insert.

Inserting an Event Chip using the @ symbol — Inserting an Event Chip with the @ Sign

Appearance of Chips in your Spreadsheet

An event chip has a pill-shaped grey highlighting containing the event’s Summary.

An Event Chip before hovering over it — Event Chip

When you hover your mouse over an event chip, a small panel appears with more information about the event, such as the event Summary, Start date (and time), and End date (and time).

The card that appears when you hover over a Chip — Event Chip Card

The information in a hovercard is helpful, but the data extractions are more powerful.

Data Extraction

Event Chips are a conduit for more information from Google Calendar. You can use these data extraction techniques to unlock these additional criteria such as the event URL, organizer, attendees, and location. See this post from Google explaining which extractions are limited to paid Google Workspace accounts.

Example

Let’s say you plan your next two work days in Google Calendar. Perhaps you want to see where and how far you will be driving.

First, let’s extract the Location field from these three events.

Extracting Multiple Locations

After extracting the locations, rearrange the data with start addresses in one column and end addresses in another. Add your home or office address as the beginning and end.

Addresses from Event Chips in two columns — Addresses Arranged in Two Columns

Event Chips vs. Calendar Importer

Feature	Event Chips	Calendar Importer
Insert single events	✅ Great	✅ Yes
Bulk import date ranges	❌ Manual only	✅ Seconds
Multiple calendars at once	❌ One at a time	✅ Yes
Export hundreds of events	❌ Time-consuming	✅ Under 5 seconds
Automatic updates	❌ Manual refresh	✅ Re-import anytime
Cost	Free (Workspace required for full features)	See current pricing
Best for	1-10 events	10-10,000+ events

Conclusion

As you can see, you can use Google’s Smart Canvas features to unlock a higher level of productivity in Google Sheets and extend the functionality of Google Calendar by making event data more accessible.