Re: Image export workflow to google spreadsheets
Hi here’s a workflow I’ve been using for quickly exporting out an airtable base’s table into google spreadsheet.
There’s a number of reasons why you would want to do this:
- You have a file that needs to be analyzed by someone for a one time use. This could be your accountant, purchasing dept, etc.
- You need a better printout of your airtable data. Airtables printouts right now are okay, I have issues getting a nice printout sometimes. Google spreadsheets has lots of flexibility here
- You want someone to do data entry for your base but would rather have them enter the data, send it back, so you can double check it before throwing it into your airtable base
- You want your cells to do anything for a few niche cases - Airtable is great in that it doesn’t allow you to do certain things… but sometimes you might want to have a specialized formula pasted randomly throughout your google spreadsheet.
- You’d rather not use excel for a number of reasons, possibly because it doesn’t fit your use-cases compared to google spreadsheets
One issue you’ll run across when copy pasting your base into google spreadsheets is the images won’t transfer over right away.
Here’s the solution:
- CTRL+A select everything from your current view on your base’s table
- CTRL+C copy
- CTRL+V paste into a spreadsheet
For reference, I am using my doggo base that I used for my bulk image downloader example
Pasting this into google spreadsheets looks like so
NEXT STEPS
For your images, there should only be one image in that column. If you are using multiple images in a column this won’t work
- Head over to https://www.browserling.com/tools/regex-extract-matches.
- Dump
/http[s?]://.*(.png|.jpg|.JPG)/gin #1. - Paste your raw image data in #2.
- Press Extract matches in #3.
- CTRL+C , Copy the resulting data
- CTRL+V in google spreadsheet
Data should look clean now
NEXT NEXT STEP
Your going to want to do two things to make the image play nicely.
- Use a formula for embedding image sizes
- Adjust the row height
Adjusting the row height looks like so. Click the first row, hold SHIFT, click last row, → resize rows. Enter new value
Use =IMAGE(B1,1) to have the image resize into cell, and then drill down the image
You can go back and resize the row height as needed. Image should auto adjust. After that you can print off the file
TL-DR Too Long, Didn’t Read
If you want a quick way to export your airtable to googlespreadsheets, use the following approach.
- Have all the data you want to export out on your screen in one table inside your base. This means do your Lookups, linking fields, etc ahead of time
- CTRL+A select all data
- CTRL+C copy all data
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/
- CTRL+V paste data
- Copy your image column data
- https://www.browserling.com/tools/regex-extract-matches
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/http[s?]://.*(.png|.jpg|.JPG|.jpeg)/g, dump your data, extract matches, copy and paste results -
=IMAGE(B1,1)in column C, filldown the rest - Select first row, hold SHIFT, select last row → right click, resize rows → enter new value
- Do number 10 again until you like the size of your images
Now you can do whatever you want with data.
Print it off, let someone do data entry on it, do some one time analysis, use all the features in google spreadsheet, etc.
Take all the work done by the other person, check for quality, import it back into your airtable if needed.
Some nice features of google spreadsheets is seeing what the other person is clicking in real time. Also, now you have lots of disposable quick collaborative workspaces
other time saving tips
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Use page notes chrome extension to save the regular expression. So you can access text notes on that specific page
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Bookmark the tool page on chrome bookmarks
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If you do this workflow often, you can cut out steps 9 to 11 with a premade formatted google spreadsheet.
Other useful tools for post-processing once its in google spreadsheet
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I use http://txtformat.com/ often for many database/ airtable related tasks, its used to find/replace data in bulk. Useful if you need to format data in the google spreadsheet after. Sometimes referred to as an “ETL” extract transform load process.
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https://www.browserling.com/tools/text-truncate is good to get the first few characters of data on cell. If you have long descriptions for items, but don’t want to see entire text printout
Notes on why to use google spreadsheet collaboration this way
Googlespreadsheet workflow I outlined is best used if your working with someone outside your team. Say you outsource data-entry tasks on fiverr.com or something along those lines. Or perhaps someone to write product descriptions. You haven’t vetted how reliable they are yet. You send them hard copies of what data they need to enter.
You don’t expect to receive that data until 2+ weeks out all at the same time. Its not for incremental deliveries. Its for milestone deliveries.
You also need to do a random spotcheck to ensure data reliability. Google spreadsheet has ways of catching data with errors easily. For instance, conditional formatting for “duplicate entries”. You might also need to post-format data entered from that person as well. Perhaps they might have entered phone numbers with different formatting conventions such as 444-444-4444 and also with (444)444-4444.
Because you do error checking this way, you ensure your airtable base is clean data. You also get access to airtable’s collaboration / errorchecking tools as well.
General things about google spreadsheet collaboration
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You can print out some nice pricing sheets with this workflow. If you need to send an updating pricing list to clients this is a great way to do so.
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you can protect columns of data from being edited in google spreadsheets. So if you send data to someone for bulk data entry, you can be sure your primaryKeys (first column of data) are the same, when its sent back to you
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If you add new rows of data in your airtable database after, the row numbers won’t match the spreadsheet you sent out. You can have a temporary googlesheet do vlookups as a solution
