Need to send Gmails one at a time with New Spreadsheet Row Trigger

Awesome thank you!  I have  two steps set up so the emails are only sent between 8am and 6pm central usa time.  The steps are Formatter by Zapier and Filter by Zapier.  Would I put these after the Delay After Queue?  Or after?

Hi ​@Sconi 

You do not want long Delays in Zap Runs.

With your requirements, it requires a different approach.

Essentially you will want this type of configuration…

STEPS

1. Trigger: Schedule
   1. Hourly
      1. Run at :00
         1. Duplicate the Zap and set to run at :30
   2. Help: https://zapier.com/apps/schedule/integrations#help
2. Action: Filter
   1. Check that it is within the desired days/hours
      1. See GUIDE below
3. Action: GSheets - Lookup Row
   1. Use a column to check an email status
      1. e.g. Status = PENDING
4. Action: Filter
   1. Check that a row was found to process
5. Action: Gmail - Send Email
6. Action: GSheets - Update Row
   1. Use a column to mark an email was sent
      1. e.g. Status = DONE

Help link for how to have Zaps run during specified hours: 

If you can share a screenshot of the Zap, that may help, but on the surface, it seems as though it won’t matter.

If you want to keep the “flow” a little more intuitive, I would put the delay after. That way “it feels like” you’re still blocking the emails if they get triggered after hours before they ever delay. But in reality, even if they delay before the filter, the filter will still block them if it’s after hours. Does that make sense?

Yes.  That makes sense.  I added it and will test.  Thank you so so much for your help!

Having an issue with the Delay After Queue:

Time this zap ran:  2026-02-19 13:33:23 GMT-05:00 America/New York

Release at: 2026-02-19T19:28:42-06:00

The Time delayed for is set to 3 minutes though.  I can’t figure out why it’s delaying the run for such an oddball amount of time.  

​@Sconi 

Try this other approach: 

It likely has to do with 3 possible timing issues.

1. The account timezone
2. The timezone of the data coming in
3. The timezone you are currently sitting in

If any or all of those are different, you need to resolve them by always explicitly using formatter steps to make sure they are always converted to a single format and timezone.