Google Sheets — Read sheet

Google Sheets — Read sheet

Type: googlesheets-read-sheet  ·  Package: Google Sheets Activities v1.0.5  ·  Output: DataTable

Reads all the data in a sheet and always returns it as a DataTable. It is the most common read: bring the whole content in to process it row by row, filter it or hand it to another activity.

How it works

Reads the area with data of the given sheet (the first one if sheet is empty), from A1 to the last row and column with content, in a single call to Google.

• With has-headers = true, the first row provides the column names and the following rows are the data. Cells in a row longer than the header row are dropped.
• With has-headers = false (default), columns are named Column1, Column2, … up to the longest row, and the first row is data too.
• Every cell arrives as text as displayed in the sheet; empty cells as "". A formula is read as its result.

Required parameters

None.

Optional parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
session	ZoanGoogleSheetsSession	—	Session from Google Sheets — Open. Inside Open’s body it is inherited and you can leave it empty.
sheet	string	—	Sheet name. If empty, reads the first sheet.
has-headers	bool	false	Treat the first row as column names. If false, columns are named Column1, Column2, …

Output

Always a DataTable with text columns. If the sheet is empty, returns an empty DataTable (no columns or rows), not an error: check it with rowCount(table) == 0. With has-headers = true and only the header row, returns the columns with no rows.

Common errors

Message	Cause and fix
No Google Sheets session available. Provide 'session' from a googlesheets-open activity, or place this activity inside the Open activity's body …	The activity is outside Open’s body and received no session. Move it inside the body or pass the saved session.
The spreadsheet has no sheets to read.	sheet is empty and the document has no sheets visible to the API.
A column named '…' already belongs to this DataTable.	With has-headers = true, two headers have the same text. Rename one in the sheet or read with has-headers = false.
The service sheets has thrown an exception. HttpStatusCode is …	Google rejected the call: missing sheet or range, no access, expired token or quota exceeded. See Google API errors.

Example

Google Sheets — Read sheet   session = book   sheet = "Orders"   has-headers = true   → output: orders
For Each   items = orders   itemVariable = row
 └─ activities:
      Log   message = str(row["Customer"]) + " — " + num(row["Total"])

Turn on has-headers if the sheet has titles

With a title row, has-headers = true gives you named columns (row["Customer"]) instead of row["Column1"], and the robot keeps working even if someone reorders the columns.

Related activities

• Read range — read only a range.
• Write sheet — write data back.
• Get sheet names — find out which sheets exist.