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How do I stop my Google Sheets Zap from triggering when rows are moved?

  • 4 July 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 24 views

I have set up a zap that triggers when a row is new or updated on a Google Sheets spreadsheet. This is working well and triggering consistently.

However, it also triggers every time a row is moved. So for example if I have 10 rows and delete the first row, the zap triggers for the following 9 rows as they have all moved up a row technically so it sees the cell it looks up as “new”.

I am struggling to figure out how to configure it so it only fires when a specific cell is updated and exclude when a row moves. I figured a Filter step would be a logical option, but I’m not sure how to set it up for my use case. Any ideas? Thanks!

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3 replies

SamB
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Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi there @Dan Bell 👋

There’s a Trigger Column field on New or Updated Spreadsheet Row trigger can be used to set it to only look at updates in a specific column, but it will always trigger for a new row that’s added. Google Sheets identifies each row by it’s row number and uses that as it’s unique ID. When you remove a row at the top of the spreadsheet that will change the row number/IDs of all the rows below it so the Zap will see it as new information that has appeared in each of those rows.

So it’s recommended that you don’t delete existing rows or columns while the Zap is switched on. If you do need to delete a row, instead of adding a filter it’s best to turn the Zap off first, then delete the row before then turning the Zap back on again. 

Can you try that approach and let me know whether that allows you to make the necessary changes to your Zap without it triggering unexpectedly?

D
Userlevel 1

Thanks. We found a workaround for our purposes by adding a date column in our sheet, and a filter step so the zap only runs if the date in that column matches whatever today’s date is. The zap does still trigger but it stops at the filter step for all of the rows we don’t want updates for.

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

That’s a fantastic workaround @Dan Bell! 🙌 And thanks so much for sharing it here. I’m sure that approach will be super useful to other folks running into similar issues with Google Sheets and come across this post. 

If you have any further questions or if there's anything else we can help with do let us know. Thanks again! 🤗 

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