Wondering about the best option for importing your Google Sheets data into Zapier? Or maybe you’re frustrated by the inability of the Zapier Google Sheets actions to import more than 500 rows? Well, then you’ve come to the right place! This post will walk you through the best way to import data from Google Sheets into Zapier based on how many rows or how much data you want to import.
Importing 500 Rows or Less
When you are only trying to import 500 rows or less into your Zap then using the default Google Sheets app in Zapier and one of the 3 options below is the best way to go:
- Lookup Spreadsheet Row will search for and return a single row in a spreadsheet
- Find Many Spreadsheet Rows (With Line Item Support) will search for and return a maximum of 500 rows in a spreadsheet
- Get Many Spreadsheet Rows (Advanced, With Line Item Support) will search for and return a maximum of 500 rows in a spreadsheet
Take a look at the How to use Zapier with Sheets post, which covers these 3 Google Sheets actions in Zapier, so that you can:
- Get an in-depth look at how to set up them up
- Compare their different pros and cons
- How to format their output so that you can use the imported data in subsequent actions
Importing 10MB or Less
Since the 3 Google Sheets actions above will only allow us to pull in a maximum of 500 rows we need to get creative if want to haul in the motherload!
The Import Multiple Rows from Google Sheets post will guide you through how to:
- Create a Google script to send multiple rows of data from Google Sheets to Zapier using a webhook
- Assign this script to a button in your sheet so that you can trigger the script to run
- Set up a Zapier trigger to catch the webhook from Google Sheets
The method described in the post above is effective when importing 10MB of data or less into Zapier, however, according to Zapier, the maximum webhook size you can receive in your Zap is 10MB. If you exceed this limit you will receive a 413 status code error.
Importing More than 10MB
Woah! We better call Herman Melville because its looks like you want to import a very big whale! Never fear we’ll get the harpoon out, stand proudly at the helm, and tackle this leviathan!
Before sharpening the harpoon, it is worth asking yourself if there is a better alternative to using Zapier to act on this data.
For example, it might make more sense to schedule a Python script that will read in this data from Google Sheets using the API or from a CSV file download of the desired sheet. Then APIs for different platforms e.g. Mailgun for sending email or Telnyx for sending SMS, can be used within the Python script to carry out the necessary actions. Python is much better suited, especially when using the Pandas library, to dealing with large amounts of data than Zapier.
If you are intent on using Zapier to process this Google Sheets data then the Google Sheets Lookup Value post will show you how to:
- Create a Google Script to package your data up so that it can be imported into Zapier
- Assign this script to a button so that you can trigger the script to run and alert Zapier that the data is ready
- Set up a Zap to listen out for this alert and then use the “Lookup Spreadsheet Row” action to pull in the data
N.B. Another method to import rows containing more than 10MB of data into Zapier from Google Sheets is to use nested loops (see the Zapier For Each Loop Quick-Start Guide).
What’s Next?
Now that you have imported all this tasty data into Zapier, you most likely want to iterate through these rows and do some actions for each row. If this is the case take a look at the Zapier For Each Loop Quick-Start Guide which introduces the different options for looping in Zapier with nested looping included!
