Limit Columns AppSheet Scans

[Joshua_Giles]

Hello,

I’ve got a table that is used by different apps. One of my apps only needs to view 3 columns vs. the full 15 columns of the full table. Is there a way to tell appsheet to limit the columns it pulls data from? Trying to speed up the performance.

[Mike_A]

@Joshua_Giles
Have you tried using Slices to control what columns you include in the view? I am not sure that will seriously increase your performance but you can try.
https://help.appsheet.com/data/slices/slices-the-essentials

[Steve]

Nope. You can use a slice to hide columns from users, but the entire table is still visible to the app.

[Mike_A]

Are the 3 columns of data you need read only, or does it need to be editable?

[Joshua_Giles]

I’ve got it as Read only - it’s purely used for ref. A slice still pulls full table. I just wanted to be sure I couldn’t tell the app to only pull the first 3 columns. But understand that’s not possible.

[Mike_A]

@Joshua_Giles
One thing to consider is you could have another gsheet just for the Read Only content (which can use Query/Importrange from the master sheet). This can add complexity for you, but I have used small “side-tables” for reference data.

[Joshua_Giles]

So a gsheet Select query will be faster then reading the whole sheet?

[Mike_A]

The gsheet Query happens in the background. Appsheet then is only pulling data from a much smaller spreadsheet. I do this only when the data sets are pretty large and a much reduced data set is needed. Again, not sure in your use case (column reduction - not row reduction), the complication may not be worth minor speed gain.