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Does Zapier support the Excel Table-format?

  • 20 February 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 270 views

Userlevel 1
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Dear all,

I’m new to Zapier (and integration/automation).  It is not and will not be my regular job.

Just a guy who is trying to improve project management and teams cooperation with the help of integration/automation.

Right now I’m testing integration between Excel and Wrike (project management app).

The zap is: when new row in excel → create task in Wrike.

I managed to do it and it worked as expected (easy enough for you guys but a leap step for me; I’m so proud haha).

Next I formatted the excel sheet as a table and I think that at this point things went wrong.

In any case at one point on Friday, the zap hit an error: “Required field "Title" (title) is missing.”

So I was wondering if this might have something to do with the fact that I formatted the excel Worksheetas an excel Tabel.

Thanks for your help,

Cheers

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Best answer by ICAB 20 February 2023, 16:03

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Userlevel 7
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Welcome to the Community, @ICAB. Great work on setting up that Zap! 🙂

From the sound of that error, it seems like the Excel field selected for the task title was empty. So it wasn’t able to pass on a value to Wrike to be used as the title of the task. Do you think that could be the case here? 

If so, was the task title already filled out in Excel at the time that the Zap ran? Or was the title added later?

Could you please share a screenshot of the table in Excel that’s triggering the Zap? Remember remove or hide any private information like names, emails etc. from the screenshot before sharing though. I’d like to see whether that table set up might be what’s preventing the Zap from passing on a value for the title.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Userlevel 1
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Hi Sam,

Thank you so much for reaching out and your warm welcome.

In the mean time I was contacted by the help desk and we more or less figured out that it had to do with the fact that the spreadsheet was formated as a “Table” and not as a ‘regular’ “Worksheet” or “Range” (cf. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/overview-of-excel-tables-7ab0bb7d-3a9e-4b56-a3c9-6c94334e492c).

Please find below two emails from Zapier support which I include as I think they are of general interest to the community.

Cheers,

 


EMAIL 1

From: Zapier Support <help@zapier.zendesk.com>
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 10:53 AM

Subject: Re: Zap troubleshooting: Excel2Wrike_OK

 

Hey there,
 
Thank you for reaching out to us! Osas here from Zapier Support, happy to help you with this.
 
I'm glad to know that you are new to Zapier and already making Zaps and workflows!
 
Regarding this error, that Zap run was triggered by an empty row as seen below:

ab5126572b26e10c0eb867be650a8516.png
(view larger)
 
So when the Zap was triggered, row 19 of the Excel sheet was empty.
 
This can happen when there is a formula (or formulas) in the Excel Sheet that write to rows. This can make the Zap see some rows are not empty and trigger on those rows.
 
It can also happen when you delete data from a row, but the row is not deleted itself.
 
Kindly do the following to resolve this:

  • Ensure that there are no blank rows anywhere in the middle of the sheet
  • Highlight 20 blank rows after the last blank row that contains information (as shown below) and press delete (on Mac), or backspace (on Windows) to delete those rows entirely.

    423dd9581240ae1a2d6f34456cf04d48.png 
    (view larger)
     

Do let me know if you still get the error after doing that.
 
If a Zap runs into an error, the Zap would still work and would still be polling Microsoft Excel every 15 minutes for new rows. However, if the Zap keeps running into errors constantly, the Zap would get turned off automatically due to a high error ratio.
 
That is mentioned here: https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496037690637-Troubleshoot-errors-in-Zapier#i-want-my-zap-to-continue-running-even-when-there-are-errors--0-6
 
I hope that helps.
 
Let me know if you require further assistance on this.
 
Regards,


EMAIL 2

From: Zapier Support <help@zapier.zendesk.com>
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 1:01 PM

Subject: Re: Zap troubleshooting: Excel2Wrike_OK

 

Hi there,
 
Thanks for writing back on this.
 
You are right that formatting these 1000+ rows as tables seem to have triggered the Zap multiple times as the Zap was triggered by empty rows.
 
So yes, it seems that the Zap cannot be used when the worksheet is in form of a table.
 
To make any further changes to the worksheet (like changing the format away from a table), so that the change does not trigger the Zap, you would have to turn off the Zap, make the changes, then turn back on the Zap again.
 
Let me know if you have further questions on this and I would happily answer them.
 
All the best,

--
Osas - Zapier Support
Need help or inspiration? Check out our Help Center and Zapier Community!


 

Userlevel 5
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Hey there @ICAB - just wanted to send a thanks for sharing the insights and conversation with our friends in Support. You’re spot on that they probably will help someone out with a similar problem who comes by our corner of the internet. Please feel free to come back again with any questions or feedback! Best -Rachael

Userlevel 1
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Hi all,

follow up: in the mean time I discoverd that - in principle - Zapier can work with both MS Excel formats: “Worksheet/Range-format” and “Table-format” (cf. screenshot).

I tested this option but to no avail. Although the zap passed the build-in test, for some reason still obscure to me, it did not work.

So still eager to learn of a working zap that handles this (simple)chain of events: “when new row in Excel table” (so the table-format, not the worksheet/range-format) → “New task in Wrike”.

 

Thanks and have a lovely day,

 

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