Google Sheets now helps “individuals chips,” which let you tag an individual inside a cell.
Folks chips are helpful for notifying customers after they have been talked about in a doc, assigning duties to people, and making spreadsheet knowledge richer.
Associated put up: Higher Google Docs with “good chips!” (4 concepts to your classroom)
Folks chips hyperlink to a consumer profile, giving fast visibility into extra details about the individual.
Once you enter an e-mail handle into Google Sheets, you may be prompted to transform the information right into a individuals chip.

There are a whole lot of conditions the place individuals chips could cause points.
- Exporting a .csv file (individuals chips should not transformed again into e-mail addresses)
- Utilizing formulation to change or extract knowledge from e-mail addresses
- Making a mail merge.
I just lately bumped into a difficulty the place somebody despatched me a spreadsheet with individuals chips as an alternative of e-mail addresses. I wanted to view the precise e-mail handle so I used to be confronted with the duty of eradicating the individuals chips.
In accordance with Google, you may take away individuals chips from Google Sheets by right-clicking on a cell, deciding on “view extra cell actions,” after which “take away individuals chip.”
This did NOT work for me. The choice merely wasn’t there. 🤷♂️
I attempted altering the information formatting, however that didn’t work both.
That is the tactic I used to take away individuals chips from my Google Sheet:
- Choose a number of cells that include a individuals chip.
- Press ctrl + / in your keyboard (clear formatting)
- Your individuals chips are actually common e-mail addresses!

The keyboard shortcut ctrl + / removes textual content formatting. I exploit it on a regular basis when I’m copying data from one place to a different and don’t need any of the formatting choices to be copied. Thankfully, this trick works with individuals chips as effectively!
Associated put up: Chromebook Keyboard Shortcuts
Find out how to disable individuals chips in Google Sheets
At this level I hoped to indicate you learn how to disable individuals chips completely so that you just don’t need to take away them manually.
Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be an choice as of Could 2022, primarily based on this help thread.
Whereas individuals chips may be useful, they will additionally trigger points in some conditions. Hopefully Google will add the power to disable individuals chips sooner or later.
For now, we’re caught with eradicating them manually.