Question: Selectively Re-Loading Sheets/Tabs

Hi,

Does anyone here know if there is a way to reload only some of the sheets/tabs when editing the Glide apps?

I have lots of AWS S3 links in my app and every time I reload the sheets to see my latest app edits it also re-loads the links to S3. The issue is that AWS charges per call so every time I reload the S3 links, it adds to my S3 cost.

I’m wondering if there is a way to re-load only some of the Google sheets (the ones that don’t contain the S3 links).

Thanks!

That is impossible, sadly. Besides, if you are going to have users using your app, then that will also be lots of calls.

@RonnieL you may be able to use importrange and a second workbook to avoid the extra charges.

1 Like

I think this may be your best cost affective alternative.

Thanks for the tips.

@Eric_Penn can you elaborate on how the importrange saves the calls to S3? I am not sure that I understand it. Thanks!

I would recommend starting a second workbook and putting the data we don’t want reloaded in there.

Next we’ll use importrange function to call the data back to the original. Here is an example of how to use importrange.

Summary

=IMPORTRANGE("YourLinkHere","MathScore!A2:Z"

Notes:

  1. To find your link navigate to the share button. (In your new workbook)

  2. Back in the original… copy the formula above and replace MathScore with your sheet name from the new workbook.

  3. After the sheet name enter in your range, in this example it was A2:Z

As I understand it, any data in a second workbook will be unaffected by glide edit/reloads.

@Drearystate is truly an expert in this field and would love to hear his approach :wink:

3 Likes

What @Eric_Penn is suggesting is that the workbook that has the links you need to reload needs to not be the workbook Glide accesses. the IMPORTRANGE function as explained above allows you to import any data into your glide google sheets from any other google sheet. The import is instantaneous and it allows you to limit what amount of data is used and which data. One of the things I tend to do with this is setup the IMPORTRANGE function on my data sheet that houses the data that I need to access. It imports my search criteria from the google/glide sheet. It then is setup to use vlookup or whatever function I would normally use to isolate the data I want to present. The search results are then imported back to my glide/google sheet with another IMPORTRANGE function. I know it sounds like it is clunky or tedious but once you have it setup the google servers process the workloads which leads to the same delay time as it would if it was natively in your google/glide sheet. By doing it this way you only have to import the rows you need at the time you need it. To think about this in terms of users. If you had 400 users all searching for data you would only need 400 rows and your data could be taking up tens of thousands but it wouldn’t reflect in your google/glide sheet. Now in terms of the AWS server situation again you only need to pull the data not associated with AWS S3 links and you should be all good.

1 Like

Tip: When copying your link for IMPORTRANGE select “Restricted Only people added can open with this link”

The restricted link is inherently more secure :+1:

1 Like