Your sheet needs a Row ID column first (yet Row ID exists)

[kiptoo]

I’m suddenly seeing this error when trying to add new rows to some of my tables in the Glide Data Editor:

Your sheet needs a Row ID column first.

Without a Row ID Glide can’t accurately add new data to this sheet.

I use Google Sheets as my primary data source. The error started occurring after I renamed one of my sheets in Google Sheets (but reverting the renaming doesn’t resolve it). The layouts work all fine. It’s strange because I already have row ID columns in both the Google Sheet and the Glide tables.

I’d appreciate any ideas what’s causing this behavior and how to fix it.

[Uzo]

You lost row ID by changing the name of the column or sorting… you need to add a new one

[ThinhDinh]

As Uzo said, there might be a point where you unknowingly changed the name of the rowID column and it got “disconnected”, so Glide now see it as a text column instead of a “rowID” column.

If it isn’t too much of a hassle (relating to the rowIDs being used in other tables), you can try removing the current column, and add a new rowID column to see if it helps.

[kiptoo]

I didn’t really change the name of the column. As mentioned, I changed the sheet name of the underlying Google Sheets table.

In any case, I had to recreate the row ID with these steps:

1. [In the Google Sheet] Rename existing Row ID column to “Old Row ID”
2. [Glide Data Editor] Attempt to add a new row to raise the “Your sheet needs a Row ID column…” alert. Click “Add Row ID”
3. [Google Sheet] Replace the contents of the (new) Row ID column with the values from “Old Row ID” to preserve any existing relations/lookups
4. [Google Sheet] Delete the “Old Row ID” old ID column
5. [GDE] Sync data manually for the changes to take effect

[ThinhDinh]

@kiptoo

Replace the contents of the (new) Row ID column with the values from “Old Row ID” to preserve any existing relations/lookups

I suspect this will break things. When Glide syncs back the IDs from the Sheet, this will be read as “text” and not truthfully rowIDs, since they are not a match with what Glide has under the hood.