Weird hack (or bug?!) that allows you to post a new GSheet row at the top instead of the bottom

  • 9 October 2019
  • 1 reply
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Userlevel 7
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So, I discovered this one by accident and I'm guessing this is a bug, either with Google Sheet's API or Zapier's integration, but I found a way to post a new row at the top of a Google Sheet instead of the bottom.

Say you want a sheet with 4 columns - what you need to do is set up a Google Sheet with 6 columns.

Important - the 1st column needs to be left completely blank - no header or anything data at all in that column.

For the other columns you intend to use, the header row should be left blank.

The final column you don't intend to use should have a header - this is so the other columns appear as mappable in the Zapier editor.

You'll then want to put a dummy row in:

Screen Shot 2019-10-09 at 19.36.47.pngNow try adding a row to that sheet with Zapier:

Screen Shot 2019-10-09 at 19.42.51.pngI have no idea why, but if you test it, you'll end up with this:

Screen Shot 2019-10-09 at 19.43.07.pngTest again with different data and it will still add the row at the top:

Screen Shot 2019-10-09 at 19.48.35.pngThe only possible use case I had for this is if you wanted to have all the rows on a Google Sheet trigger a zap at once. By having a zap add a row at the top of the Google Sheet, all the other rows would get pushed down by one which would fire a "Updated Row"-triggered zap assuming you had some sort of unique ID column.

Anyway, curious to hear if anyone has done/used this before and perhaps some insight from @jesse / @Danvers if it's a bug.

And, if it's a bug, I vote not to fix it based on the use case I outlined above which so far isn't really easily achievable in other ways. 😅






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1 reply

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey @Andrew_Luhhu - interesting find! Google Sheets is very particular when it comes to formatting sheets in a way where they work best with your Zap. I can't say this is a bug, necessarily, just one of the many variants of what could happen when deviating away from the structure we recommend, here: https://zapier.com/apps/google-sheets/help#how-setup-your-google-spreadsheet-work-zapier

I also can't say if this result will be consistent but if it works for folks, feel free to take advantage of this weird edge case! :)