I wanted to create a Zap that opens an Excel file from Drive on Monday at 8:00.
So far I couldn’t find a way doing this.
Any suggestions? I would highly appreciate the help and say thanks in advance.
Greets
Cora
Best answer by MarijnVerdult
Hi @Cora, one other solution you could try is through Automator (Mac) or Windows Task Scheduler. This is of course not a Zapier solution and will run “locally”, i.e. on your computer but it might be a solution for your use case.
You could either automate it in such a way that the login will be remembered (advanced) or that it just simply opens the file in Excel or the Browser automatically at the set time and if login is required, you need to do that yourself.
The action would be to open a specific Excel file.
That needs to be done in order for the file (or rather a couple of files) to update/refresh its data. It would make it easier for me, instead of setting a reminder and navigating to the files, for them to just pop open, do the refresh and all I have to do is to close them again.
This way the data will flow nicely into datasets in Power BI.
Well, it already does the refresh (it has an integration (gets data from a web source) to an App called CommCare) but the file still needs to be opened for the refresh to take place. Well, sometimes you have to verify the login again but usually, all you need to do is open the Excel file (not a Google Sheet), wait a few seconds, save and close it again.
So this is all I need the Zap to do. Open that Excel file.
r = requests.get("https://drive.google.com/")
status = 'Success!'if r else'An error has occurred.'
output = [{'response_url': r.url, 'response_status': status}]
you would need to change the URL on the first line of course and please check if Excel counts this as an open...
I do not think requesting the file would count as opening it but “moving” or making some discrete update to the file might.
Try testing the Move File action in Zapier (I wouldn’t actually move the file though).
When you set it up in Zapier, simply give it the id of the file and keep the folder the same. If it is in the main folder of your Google Drive simply type in root
If “moving” the file works then you would just need to set up a Zap to trigger with Schedule by Zapier.
Thank you both @MarjinVerdult and @GetUWired for your responses.
I have to try both. But I assume since I sometimes have to verify the login to CommCare for the refresh to happen just moving the file around probably won’t do the job.
Hi @Cora, one other solution you could try is through Automator (Mac) or Windows Task Scheduler. This is of course not a Zapier solution and will run “locally”, i.e. on your computer but it might be a solution for your use case.
You could either automate it in such a way that the login will be remembered (advanced) or that it just simply opens the file in Excel or the Browser automatically at the set time and if login is required, you need to do that yourself.
Thank you for checking in. I just saw the suggestion for the Windows Scheduler and set up one task for Monday as a test. I let you know if that worked.
The other recommendations didn’t bring the desired outcomes. I guess just sending a request and moving doesn’t automatically refreshes the data.