Summary of Google Workspace 2023 new features (Pt 1)

In a bustling year of developments, the Google Workspace team introduced numerous new features and improvements across their suite of apps. Here’s a concise summary of my top picks that affected Sheets, Docs, Drive, and the new AI Bard.

Sheets

New functions

Another 11 brand-new functions were added to Sheets, including LET, TOROW, TOCOL, WRAPROWS, WRAPCOLS, CHOOSEROWS, CHOOSECOLS, VSTACK, HSTACK, MARGINOFERROR, EPOCHTODATE. As you may guess from the names a lot of these are aimed at working with either rows and columns of data.

I show some examples of CHOOSEROWS and CHOOSECOLS in this post. I also explain how VSTACK, TOCOL, TOROW, LET, as well as CHOOSEROWS, and CHOOSECOLS work in my latest book Google Sheets Functions 2.

Mail merge

They expanded the mail merge functionality, as now we can link a Sheet which contains the data we want to share with those we’re going to email. I take you through how to use this feature in this post.

Smart chips

As part of Google’s smart canvas, we have increased connectivity between the apps, allowing us to link other Google files and apps. We can now add Google Map chips showing us a preview of the location and with a click taking us to the location in Maps. We can also quickly add relative dates, like today, yesterday, tomorrow and specific dates. Plus, we can add Google Finance chips to show the latest financial data for a company. More info here.

Docs

Building blocks

On opening a new Google Doc we now see the building blocks at the top of the page. With one click we can add a meeting notes template or an email template. Plus, we can access other templates using the @ command, and we can also create our own ones, by selecting it and saving it for future use. More info here and here.

Variable chips

These allow for quick document creation where placeholders (variables) are set up and can then be added throughout the document. Then one of these placeholders is updated and it updates the text everywhere in the document.

A good example of this is where you can add a company name chip in various places in your document and then you define it with the company name you want. This changes the name everywhere in the document. Then if you want to send the same document to another company all you need to do is redefine the variable and it will change the company name in every place it appears in the document. More info here.

ESignature

Docs can be signed digitally, so there’s less of a reason to print them out. Trees will be happy! This allows you to request signatures for a document, e.g. a contract, and to also see the status of pending signatures. This is currently in beta but I would expect general access this year. There will also be the ability to request multiple signers, to request signatures from non-Gmail users and to initiate it from a PDF stored on Drive. More info here.

Drive

New look and home page

The Drive page has changed over the years and the changes this year certainly make it much easier to use Drive and to find what you’re looking for. The new Home page will suggest files and folders based on their use, so you don’t have to continually go looking for them in your folders.

Move folders to Shared Drive

When Shared Drives first came out, the one thing we couldn’t do was move folders and their content to a Shared Drive, which meant having to move files across and setting up folders on the Shared Drive. Fortunately, we can now move folders to a Shared Drive. Note, this is only for Workspace accounts.

Lock files

Locking files means reviewers can’t edit the file, or edit comments and suggestions. It can now be easily done by right-clicking on a file and selecting File information > Lock. This can also work with the Approvals system which allows documents to be locked pending approval from certain users. More info here.

Scanner

As an iOS user, I’d been waiting for this for ages. We can now scan documents using a mobile and they will go straight into our Drive. More info here.

Bard

Last year certainly was the breakthrough year for AI and LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT. Google released their own one called Bard, available at bard.google.com. Initially released in “experiment’ mode, I found it to be lacking in comparison with ChatGPT but more recently they released (at least in some countries) a new AI model called Gemini which is far more powerful. What has been interesting is that these LLMs haven’t just been standalone apps but developers have quickly connected them to the Workspace apps, allowing you to access them directly from Gmail, Sheets, Docs, etc. It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes in 2024!

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More improvements in part 2 and part 3…coming this week!