Is it better if the data is in the same file or in a different file?

[Pointer]

Is it better to have separate worksheets or to have them all in the same working file so that the records synchronize faster? for google sheet.

Some tables have a lot of data and I think the records made to other tables in the same file are slowing down.

[Pratyay_Rakshit]

Always the same worksheet.

Use yourself as an analogy - if you were cooking, wouldn’t it be more convenient to have the ingredients all in one place rather than having to run into different rooms to get different items?

[scott_robinson]

I would like to add my thoughts on this as I have an opposite use case here.

There are some limitations put on Google sheets that say you can’t have more than 5 million cells. Also that your sheet will slow down a lot before you even reach half that amount. Thus when realistically looking at the amount of data gathered in a year’s use of appsheet when using multiple tabs in the same sheet, I felt it better to split that sheet up into individual ones instead.

Another reason for splitting them up is that I use the Appscript onChange() project triggers a lot to generate sequential order IDs for quotes, cases, references etc.

There are quotas placed on the amount of times a user can run a trigger in a single day and the onChange() event will fire on any change made to any cell in any tab in a sheet. So by splitting the sheets up into multiple files I can make my triggers only fire when my master table is changed.

onChange() is something I use massively for creating folder structures in Google drive and linking the URL back into appsheet as well, but I am looking forward to being able to trigger Appscript from within appsheet at some point.

I hope this alternative viewpoint on this question makes sense. I have a naming convention I use for my appsheet projects where if you were to view an app folder you would see a sheet called Appsheet - Project Name. Then a number of other sheets called child tables…Appsheet - Project Name - Child Table - Name of child table 1, Appsheet - Project Name - Child Table - Name of child table 2 etc. This also makes it easy to bring tables from other apps together and create apps that can share data.

Yes, initial sync times can hit 15 to 20 seconds, and you have to bear in mind I am using many virtual columns to perform calculations here, but I think it’s worthwhile for the time saving down the line with App sizes.

[Pointer]

I agree with you on this. I plan to use my main table as separate tables as sub tables.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

There are some help articles that touch the subject.

help.appsheet.com

How to Use Multiple Sheets in Your App

You might want to use data from more than one spreadsheet in your app. There are two ways to do this.

Please refer to the point on “Place read-only tables in their own workbook” in the article below

help.appsheet.com

Improving the Speed of Sync

Six different ways to improve sync performance.

[Pointer]

I strongly disagree with this approach, when I try to access the subtable next to the main table where there is too much data, the entire table will be expected to load. It feels more correct to be separate.