Newby - Using Excel on Google drive for user data ...

tom_vouk · 02-19-2020 08:44 PM

Hi,

I’m new to Appsheet and been playing around with the app a while and also browsing help, forums and videos.

I’ve split out PO history sheets and have them “live” separately on Google drive (shared) - one is called Current year and the other one Previous year. The users would periodically update the content with the data from their ERP system and I’d like to have this synced to specific table in my App and display it there.

Is there a way for a user to paste data directly into the app somehow using pre-determined columns and cell formatting structure?

Ideally they could even edit specific fields in the App directly.

Whatever I do, I can’t seem to find a way to bring these 2 external sheets to the app and have them synced every time I change something either in the app fields or in the actual sheet on google drive.

Also, in the app view/edit mode for the user, can you actually display in the same way as in Excel, i.e. columns in the top row and below the actual data with their ability to filter and/or sort on specific columns?

What am I missing here? Thanks in advance for any pointers.

Regards,

Tom

Aleksi

Hi Tom, first I would check your Behavior options from Behavior > Offline/Sync. When you copy & paste data directly to your sheet, the app doesn’t know you have done something with the data. Please check that option “Delta sync” is set as OFF.

If you need to filter data from the app, you can use “Search” tool for that purpose. You can find it from the right upper corner from the app.

Btw… you don’t need to use two different tables for history and live data if the column structure is the same. You can use slices for that purpose and use them as a source for your view. Please check this article how you can do that…

Steve

In general, having users directly access the spreadsheet the app is using as a data source is a bad idea. The app expects to have control of the spreadsheet, and changes by other means could cause problems.

No.

What do you mean by this?

The app works with a copy of the data. When the app performs a sync, changes made within the app are pushed to the shared data source (the spreadsheet) and updates are pulled from the data source. There is no (trivial) way to sync every time a change is made in the app, and there is simply no way for the app to know changes have been made to the spreadsheet directly except by syncing.

No.

I actually wonder if a custom app is the right choice for your needs. Perhaps your users should just use the Excel app?

tom_vouk

Thanks for the feedback. Thinking it more through based on your feedback, here’s what I think. The app would need to pull/import the data on demand from the 2 spreadsheets. For one of them this would typically only need to happen once a year with the data simply replacing anything already in corresponding table of the app. For the other sheet the update would be done typically once a month. The imported data from this sheet would ideally simply be added to what’s already in the corresponding table in the app (add new rows below what’s already there). So we’re talking about one-way periodic transfers from Google drive into the App instigated by the User. The “App” works in Excel however has got some issues related to Excel limitations where something like Appsheet would work much better.

Steve

Newby - Using Excel on Google drive for user data Entry (large amounts of Purchase order PO data)