Question

Creating a NEW Google Spreadsheet for each report

  • 19 May 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 278 views

Userlevel 1

I have a Zap that triggers off the Scheduler then calls an App to gather data from a Webhook, populates a Google Spreadsheet template, copies the template file to a archive Google folder and finally emails the new file via Gmail.

 

My issue is one that I see others have had where now I need to remove the rows from the template for tomorrow’s report.  I don’t want a running report.  So I have another Zap that triggers on the new row within the template sheet that calls a find row and then delete row. 

I find that the delete Zap doesn’t always delete all rows or even fire everytime.  I could use some advice from the community whether there is a better way to create a new sheet and populate the data or to reset my master template for the next report.

Thank you!


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4 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @Tim!

 

First of all, I’m wondering why the delete row step isn’t working. I suspect that what’s happening is that as each row is deleted, it will change the row ID of the next row in the sheet, which will cause problems with the Zap being able to find the next row. If you could find a way to always delete the rows from the bottom up, that would probably work better. 

 

That said, it might not be possible to work from the bottom up, so let’s look at another way around this. It sounds like this might work if you copy the spreadsheet first, then add the data in it - so you don’t have to delete the rows from the template. The Create Spreadsheet action allows you to copy and existing sheet, so that should do what you need here. 

 

The Zap for that would be roughly this:

  1. Scheduler
  2. Webhooks
  3. Google Sheets - Create Spreadsheet (copying the template)
  4. Google Sheets - add the information to the sheet
  5. Gmail - email file

For step 4 of the above, you’ll need to use a custom value for the Spreadsheet to which you want to send the information. When you do that, the Zap wont be able to pull in the column fields - but there is a workaround for that. @AndrewJDavison_Luhhu explains how to do that in response to this question about creating a sheet and adding rows.

 

I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions 🙂

Userlevel 1

Danvers,

Thank you for the response. I have tried that method but it doesn’t work. See the last comment in that thread. 
 

I’ve been over this thing backwards and forwards. 
 

-Tim

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

I’m sorry that you’re not having success with this Zap. I think that we’ll need to take a closer look to understand what’s happening here, I've escalated this to the Support team so that they can take a look for you. I just sent you an email asking for a few more details and when you respond, the Support Team will pick that up with you via email.

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @Tim!

Since this was a little while ago, I wanted to check in to see if you’d managed to solve this or whether you still needed help here. Please let us know!