Google Workspace Changes

More control over accessibility preferences in Google Sheets

Improving the ability to adjust your accessibility preferences for Sheets separately. Rather than having the same accessibility settings apply across these products, you’re now able to set preferences for each product individually. We expect this change to make it easier to ensure accessibility settings are personalized to best meet each user’s needs.

Insert people chips in Google Sheets to view contact information and take actions.

Users can now add people chips directly into Google Sheets by typing '@' or selecting Insert > People chip. These chips allow users to quickly view detailed information about colleagues or contacts, including their location, job title, and contact information, and perform actions such as booking meetings, starting a Chat, or sending an email directly from the smart chip.

Google Sheets is updating its menus to improve the findability of key features.

Google Sheets is updating its menu bar and right-click menus to make commonly-used features easier to locate. The update includes shortening menus to prevent them from being hidden off-screen, reorganizing features into more intuitive locations (such as adding freeze row/column to the right-click menu), shortening item descriptions for faster recognition, and adding icons. These changes affect all menus, including File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Data, Tools, Extensions, Help, and Accessibility.

New intelligent, context-aware suggestions for formulas and functions in Google Sheets.

Google Sheets now offers in-line, sequential, and context-aware suggestions for formulas and functions as users begin typing. These suggestions are designed to help users write formulas more accurately and speed up data analysis. Users can access additional incremental suggestions via a drop-down menu, and the feature can be disabled through the Tools menu or the suggestion dialog box.

Easily customize and identify theme colors in Google Sheets and Slides.

Google has updated the color picker in Sheets and Slides to make theme colors easier to find and select. The theme colors section is now located at the top of the color picker, and the theme placeholder now displays the name of the active theme, allowing users to more easily identify and apply company brand colors.

Set custom table ranges for charts in Google Sheets

Google Sheets is improving the way data is suggested and selected when creating charts. Users can now specifically select which columns to use for the chart axis and series, rather than having all data ranges on a table automatically used. This allows for quicker customization of charts to display the most relevant data when working with datasets containing slicers, pivot tables, and other elements.

Set custom table ranges for charts in Google Sheets

Improving the way data is suggested and how data is selected when creating a chart in Google Sheets. Allowing to select which columns to use for the chart axis and series

Sort and filter cells by text or fill color in Google Sheets

Added two additional parameters to filter and sort cells by in Google Sheets: Text color and Fill (background) color.

Retirement of the Sheets v3 API and migration to v4 API.

Google is retiring the Sheets v3 API and requiring developers to migrate their applications to the v4 API. Following several timeline extensions, the final turndown of all components of the v3 API is scheduled for August 2, 2021.

Update to Sheets API v4 migration timeline

Extending the timeline to allow developers additional time to migrate their applications from Sheets v3 API to the v4 API.

Break out a single value within a pie chart in Google Sheets

Google Sheets now allows users to highlight a specific slice of a pie or donut chart by 'pulling it out,' providing more control over chart aesthetics and better visibility for the most important data points.

Break out a single value within a pie chart in Google Sheets

You can now “pull out” and highlight a slice from a pie or donut chart in Google Sheets. This feature gives you more ways to control the look of your charts and better display the most important data in Sheets.

Data Connector for Zendesk is now available as an add-on for Google Sheets.

Google has introduced a new data connector add-on for Google Sheets that enables users to import and analyze data from Zendesk. This tool allows organizations to configure query configurations, search for Zendesk tickets, list metrics, and refresh query results directly within a spreadsheet using the Zendesk API.

Google launches a 'Getting Started with Google Sheets' course on Coursera.

Google has introduced a 'Getting Started with Google Sheets' course on Coursera, designed for new users, onboarded employees, and students to learn how to organize information and analyze data. The course is free for all users, with an optional paid tier for access to additional content, projects, quizzes, and a course certificate.

Directly click on chart elements to move and delete them in Google Sheets

Google Sheets has introduced new features allowing users to easily customize charts by clicking directly on data labels, chart titles, or legends to drag and reposition them, or delete them using the delete or backspace keys. Additionally, the update includes keyboard navigation support (using Tab, Enter, Escape, and Arrow keys) and screen reader verbalization for chart elements to improve accessibility.