Hey friends! I’m running into a problem/confusion that I’m unsure how to handle and I couldn’t find anything similar in the topics.
Basically, I want to set up a Zap to email a user if someone comments on an item they posted, comments on an item they had previously commented on (regardless of who posted it), and if someone buys an item the user posted. I think I have a handle on the purchase notification but I can’t figure out how I would alert the item poster of a new comment since in the Comments sheet there isn’t anywhere that the comment is tied to the original poster. The subject of the comment is filled in with the name of the item being commented on so I suppose I could tell it to grab the poster’s email instead. But then there would be no way to allow someone to receive notification that someone commented a response if they aren’t the original poster.
Is there a way to add columns to the Sheets and tell it where to get its info from or is this only possible on the Data Editor sheets? If that’s the case, can I somehow add the Comments sheet to the Data Editor? Am I misunderstanding how the comments data is created in the first place?
I’ve included screenshots of the comments section showing little available customization and the sheet with the data it does collect automatically.
Thanks in advance for the help!
Megan
Hi, yes it’s possible.
I added some columns to the sheet to send an email notification to the sender and recipient of the comment.
And this is the result
And next i have create a conditionally run in Zapier for send mail
Hi Fabio, thanks for the help. I’m not sure I understand what your screenshots are showing. The first one you added a column and gave it a formula telling it to do what exactly? Is it just finding the email of the original poster for you so you can use the column in a zap action?
How do you link the comment to the item it’s being posted to? The unique identifier is for the comment itself and not the item, right?
Yes, I have different types of comments.
If I have text in the topic then I know it’s a generic comment
If I have an email address in the topic, I know it’s part of a 1to1 chat and then I send an email notification.
If in the mail column and in the topic column there is the same email address, I know that the customer is writing then I added the last column created by me to know the recipient of the email
If there are different addresses in the topic column and in the mail column, then I know that the staff is responding to the customer.
Ok, so I need to just create a new column that will look up the email address of the person who posted the item and use that for my zap…? How do I do a lookup from another sheet if I’m not able to use the Data Editor telling it where to look for the information it needs?
You’ll need to use sheet formulas…
Tutorial: Arrayformula in Google Sheets, good practices & how to overcome Arrayformula restrictions with scripts
You’ll want to do this anyway since a zap will need to be triggered from the spreadsheet anyway.
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Have you looked at the ‘App: Comments’ sheet?
Mine includes both the username and the email address of the user that commented (as well as the topic reference). I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything special to make it that way. Or maybe I did… it was a while ago 
Yes, the second screenshot I included is from that sheet. The issue is that it includes the username of the person posting the comment and not the username who owns the item being commented on. I think the solution is to add columns using the lookup to populate it with the right information from other sheets like users or listings.
Robert’s suggestion to look at the array formulas is what I’m working on now and I think that’s what I need to do. I’ll report back though 
ah, gotcha. Sorry, I misread your original post
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