Google Sheets Interface Changes

About this Tutorial

Showing off New experiences in smart canvas changes to sheets. Including Date Chips, and Files Chips. Introduced in early 2023.

Video Transcript

<div>00:00 Hello, welcome. So this video is pretty informal. It's about the new interface changes in Google Sheets and maybe some things you might have missed that are pretty new to Google Sheets. 00:11 I was rereading recently this. I'm recording this in April and this article came out in end of February. So it's been out a couple months already almost. 00:20 Just a couple months, next week, February 24th. So yeah, in about a week this will be out for a couple months. 00:28 And actually the changes of Google Sheets interface have started rolling out.

You'll see this sort of pill-shaped, blueish, grayish area here now, which this used to be sort of all Sheets white or gray. 00:45 But what is interesting about this article, because I was really trying to figure out why did Google do this? What is the impact? 00:55 Why is this better than, say, not doing it, right? Why do it? Instead of just leaving Sheets alone. And what is interesting is that Google Sheets is moving towards a more of a tool within Google Workspace than a standalone spreadsheet software. 01:14 And it's in this article that I sort of missed this pattern.

Where really Google Sheets is a tool in your work team, in your team and in Workspace. 01:28 So it's adding this gray, this pill thing across everywhere. So docs, it said docs, slides, Sheets. And so this is interesting that it's going. 01:41 To be more again, a visual representation. These things are connected and could be connected even more. And we have new chips and some new things that I'm not sure you know about because let's look at this. 01:57 So if you wanted today's date, usually you would have to write.

Write equals today and then you have parentheses and you have today's date. 02:05 But now you can write today at today. If we can zoom in here and see this. That is all you need and you can select today's date. 02:16 Let's select it and see what see today. At today, if we select today's date, we now get the same thing, right? 02:29 But this is sort of more powerful because now it doesn't look like I actually put in a date like a formula . 02:36 This formula will all constantly update. But the at today. Just do at today. This is not going to update.

It will keep today's date. 02:52 But this today will constantly update. So it's interesting. Now I can see, you know, between these two things, there's two very good reasons why you would use one or not the other. 03:02 I have always used this formula equals today so that I can sort of filter things. Like if you have sort of actions that are taking place and you want to say, I only want to see the last seven days. 03:11 So you just do as a start date or an end date , you would say today and then you can do this equals minus seven usually and you can get seven days. 03:22 A go.

So now you have a start date and an end date for every time you open the sheet, it'll be seven days ago and then today. 03:29 But if you're like, you know what? I just want today's date and I don't necessarily want to have to remember a the date or figure it out. 03:40 Right. Of course, the dates every. Everywhere, but like just that action at today can select today's date and done. And it is a function . 03:48 It's not a function , but it is a pickable date here. That's pretty cool.

But there's something else you can access. 03:55 And again, being part of Google workspace makes this really powerful. You can start getting, files into here. But not just that, you can do data extraction. 04:08 How do you do data extraction? It's in this article here. When we do smart chip data extraction allows you to enrich sheets with information about people, files, events. 04:18 For example, if you need key contact details for a project, you can right click the relevant cells .

Select data extraction right here. 04:27 And it should show up over here where data is right around the drop down in smart chips, but it is rolling out pretty soon. 04:38 If they say the end of February, they said in a few weeks, we'll see. How that is. We're now two months into this and we don't have data extraction on our workspace, but you might. 04:49 And going back to the today, you also have at yesterday, at tomorrow, and at date, which makes Management of timelines easier so we can just type in yesterday and there we go. 05:01 Yesterday's date.

Really interesting that they've made this, you know, a selectable thing. Like, I don't know why you can't necessarily just do tomorrow. 05:13 There and you can hit enter and there you go. We got yesterday's date, tomorrow's date, and then at date, We can now select from a picker any. 05:23 We want really cool. You can just hit enter. You don't have to select it. I know sometimes we don't necessarily know what buttons to press when with these new interfaces, but you can just hit enter. 05:37 So you can just do at yesterday hit enter and there you go. At date. Hit enter.

Oh, and it also gives you a little selection . 05:46 If you just do at date. There you can hit the down arrow for today's date down twice for tomorrow's date and third time for yesterday's date. 05:55 Pretty cool. And then also it appears there are finance chips so we can just do like a KO. Think there's Coca-Cola. 06:08 So the finance chips allow you to get the stock stuff. You know, again, this is sort of a different way to access Google Finance. 06:17 So you can use Google Finance KO for that is the. Price of KO, which is Coca-Cola.

But here, this what is this called? 06:30 Finance chip allows you to see much more details. You have people, file chips, calendar events, place and finance chips . Really interesting way to use Google Sheets now. 06:43 So while the over. Arcing news in the world right now and online is AI.

I think these new interface chips and these file extraction, data extraction is going to be pretty cool, especially if you're managing many sheets. 06:57 I have talked about a little bit, you know, managing sheets of sheets like you now can sort of build a sheet of. 07:04 It's much easier around projects and get timelines and owners of these sheets and really manage your Google drive much easier and better from a Google sheet. 07:15 What's really cool though is like with AI and these new interface changes coming, how are they going to combine into interesting ways? 07:24 So, we have a little bit in another video about AI and Google sheets about this Explorer.

We have Explorer, this is AI inside of sheets. 07:31 We already have Google sheets offering us formulas if it knows like, okay, we have today, whoops, not today, today, tomorrow, we have, let's do 34. 07:44 And if we do sum, it should, see, it says D3 to D4. It sort of automatically knows. And these are little bit AI, little bit just heuristics like, okay, you know, we have only cells that have data in them. 07:59 We're going to hit that sum. But that sum is really cool to make it very easy and fast to be able to do simple. 08:11 And so, AI is already in the sheets.

How is it going to continue to be integrated into sheets? I think it will be through this explore feature. 08:20 We'll probably be able to do, see, we can ask date about this data now, but maybe we can ask it to. 08:25 We can do things. There'll be some interesting AI components, but check out sort of the new interfaces all rounded. This is very different than what Sheets has been for now more than a decade, right? 08:38 We have rounded corners. This is like unheard of in the Google Sheets space. We have these pills. So they can be color coded. 08:47 They are automatically pills.

I have another video here about drop-down aggravations and how you can change those away from pills. 08:56 If you're like, oh my god, this stands out way too much. But it looks like these new added capabilities need to be stand out because we need to know that this has more capabilities than just text in a cell, right? 09:11 We want to know, okay, this is actually a link to the file, but also a link to all the details and data around that file. 09:18 Very interesting updates to the Google Sheets interface.

If you've noticed any yourself or you do end up having the data extraction earlier than I do, let me know and happy to discuss with you new and improved UI around Sheets. 09:36 Again, Sheets, funny enough, with this new UI and it sort of has this more bluish tint to it when we have selected, which is really nice actually, it makes it much easier. 09:45 To see what is selected, what is the active cell , what have I selected, it's very much higher contrast here.

But our spreadsheet 's still black and white and still the default is aerial, right? 09:57 So everything inside of Sheets that you are learning here at Better Sheets is so much still useful in addition to just the UI changes around the Sheets. 10:05 Again, this is, to summarize, this is making Google Sheets fit in in the Google Workspace much more seamlessly, right? So if you go to doc.new, this will have a similar interface up here. 10:21 Again, right, yep, that pill shaped there and we know, okay, we are in the Google Workspace.

We're not only in Google Sheets and not only in Google Docs, we are now fully entrenched inside of Google Workspace. 10:38 So yeah, really interesting. And then also, you know, bringing all that data in and sharing that data amongst these these apps is fairly new and really long awaited, right? 10:46 We know, you know, how Google Sheets should be able to speak with other Google Sheets, right? Without having to do, you know, import range , we're doing a lot of import range , right? 10:56 And now we have access to these Sheets very quickly, very easily.

And it's apparent these are links to Sheets and have more data extraction coming in. 11:05 So yeah, this is more, New Smart Canvas is interesting. I'm excited to see how AI is gonna get interpreted and worked in and useful inside of Sheets. 11:17 We'll see. We'll see what happens. Bye.</div>