How to Use Place Chips in Google Sheets

Adam Steinfurth

Place Chips are a part of Google’s Smart Canvas initiative. These chips connect the data processing ability of Google Sheets to the geographic information available in Google Maps. This connection enables rich map data to be contained in one spreadsheet cell.

Place Chips are one of many types of Smart Chips available in Google Sheets.

Inserting Place Chips into Google Sheets

@ Symbol

The easiest method for inserting Place Chips into Google Sheets is to start with the “@” symbol: Type “@” followed by the location’s name. A list of suggested places will appear after you begin typing. Select the place you want to insert.

Entering a place chip with the @ symbol
Inserting a Place Chip with the @ Sign

Menus

You can also insert an Event chip from a menu. Go to the Insert menu, pick Smart chips, then choose Place.

Menu option to insert a Place chip
Place Chip Menu Option

Link from Google Maps

You can find the location on Google Maps first, copy the link, then paste it into Sheets.

Google Maps option to copy a location's link
Maps Link

Once you paste it, press Tab to turn it into a Place chip.

A Google Maps link with the option to press tab
Using Google Maps Link

Appearance of Chips in your Spreadsheet

A Place chip has a pill-shaped grey highlighting containing the place’s location.

A place chip after insertion
Place Chip

When you hover your mouse over a Place Chip, a small panel appears with more information about the place, including a small map, the address, and a button for directions.

A Place Chip's hovercard showing a map and a button for directions
Place Chip Card

In addition to the hovercard, one data extraction is available.

Data Extraction

Furthermore, Place Chips are a conduit for more information from Google Maps. With data extraction techniques, you can pull out the URL that leads to the location in Google Maps.

A URL for Google Maps extracted from a Place Chip
Data Extraction

Even though only one data extraction is available, let’s not overlook the ability to get directions.

Directions from a Place Chip

Let’s take another look at that hovercard and notice the “View directions” button in the lower right. Clicking on this will open a sidebar pre-loaded with directions ending in your place chip’s location.

The sidebar will provide directions from a starting point to your location. All you need to do is enter a starting point.

This can be a fast way to get directions from one location to another without leaving Google Sheets. However, this technique only provides directions for one route at a time. If you have multiple start and end locations in your spreadsheet, using an add-on like TripTally is much faster.

Directions for Multiple Start and End Locations

Let’s start with a fresh set of addresses. In this case, we have several addresses.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is two-columns2-1024x333.png
Addresses Arranged in Two Columns

Looking up directions for each route individually and then copying and pasting the results back into Google Sheets is time-consuming. Let’s do it faster with an add-on.

You can use TripTally to find the time and distance for each drive. TripTally will look up the time and distance for all the rows while you stay in Google Sheets. It eliminates the need to switch programs and performs all route lookups simultaneously, saving you precious time.

Video Tutorial

YouTube player

Conclusion

As you can see, you can use Google’s Place Chips to unlock a higher level of productivity in Google Sheets by making Google Maps data accessible inside Sheets.

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