Sync issues: App data disappears or fails to update Sheet – design best practices?

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1

:eight_spoked_asterisk: Question for the Glide Community

I’m building an app in Glide and experiencing frequent sync issues. I’d like help understanding the causes and best practices to avoid these.

:red_triangle_pointed_up: Problems I’m encountering:

  1. Data entered in the app sometimes disappears unexpectedly.
  2. Data entered in the app doesn’t sync to the connected Google Sheet.

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Suspected causes:

  1. App structure changes while users are active
    Occasionally, I’ve edited the app (layout or component logic) while users were actively using it. Could this cause the app to pause syncing?
  2. Delay or failure in syncing to Google Sheets
  • Sync usually happens within 10–15 seconds, but sometimes it takes more than a minute or fails entirely.
  • When rows are sorted or Row IDs are removed, sync often breaks.
  • When multiple rows are updated at once, the delay seems more likely.

:wrench: My current workarounds:

  • Manually refresh the app in the browser if things seem off.
  • Enter as an editor and force sync from the Data tab.
  • Refresh the Google Sheet itself.
  • When deleting data, I keep the Row ID and clear the other fields, then delete the row manually via script at night.

:brick: My environment:

  • Due to many client feature requests, some Glide Tables have over 100 columns.
  • More complex screens or data seem to have more sync issues.

:red_question_mark: My questions:

  • What typically causes sync failures like these?
  • Are there best practices for app structure or data design to keep syncing stable?
  • Can having many columns (e.g. 100+) in a table cause sync problems?
  • Is it better to avoid certain operations (like deleting Row IDs or reordering rows)?
2

Delay maybe, but disappearance never happens, and I’m sure u have something wrong in your app.

u can use manual publishing yes from the publish options on the top right.

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3

Use Glide tables, you will be amazed of how fast it is!

I don’t think so.

u can use it, but make sure u did the right setup first.

4

I need to sync with Google Sheets because of my app’s setup.
I really want to find a way to fix these sync problems.

5

What exactly does “the right setup first” mean?
Could you explain what that refers to in more detail?

6

Here’s a nice video to demonstrate.
by @Gideon_Lahav_Busines

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7

Thank you. I’m not very good at English, so I had been studying on my own without checking these kinds of videos, but now I’m thinking of putting them into NotebookLM so I can review the content of all the videos.

8

Good luck, friend, excited to see what you will do, and don’t hesitate to ask if u needed any further assistance

9

Sorry for asking before watching the video, but instead of making it “Extra”, is it possible to switch to manual-only sync?

We only need syncing at the end and beginning of the month, and avoiding sync during other times might actually help prevent errors and reduce update consumption.

10

I don’t think there’s a way to do that really. Once you have established a connection with the sheet, when there’s an update, Google will tell Glide that “ok, this sheet needs to be resynced”.

11

This can be a few second to a few minutes, unless you turn on Extra, which will force syncs whether you have something new or not.

No, layout or component logic should not interfere with syncing.

I would not recommend doing sorting once the sheet is already synced. It might break rowIDs though I’m not sure if that’s a documented behavior.

If you have 100+ columns in the Sheet, it might take much more time to load.

12

We have been testing cases where synchronization does not work properly. When making changes, there are two main patterns:

  1. The update is successfully synced within about 10 seconds.
  2. The update is not synced at all.

In the second case, we observed two further outcomes:

  • When we manually force a sync from the Data tab, the data does get synced.
  • Sometimes, it seems like the data from the spreadsheet is overwritten, and the information we entered disappears.
13

In reference to your response,
Could you kindly share more details on the situations where sync completes within a few seconds, and in particular, the patterns where it takes several minutes?
Do you have any specific examples or scenarios in mind?

14

It’s truly reassuring just knowing there’s a community willing to respond to these questions.
Thank you very much—I look forward to your response.

15

There’s no real pattern that I know of. Google decides when to tell Glide to update, as far as I know.

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