Power Query, but in Google Sheets

October 16, 2020 6:15 AM

I am working with a non-profit that uses Google Suite for their office technology. I am trying to implement some dashboards and data tracking. In Office 365, I would use Power Query to automatically pull new data from additional spreadsheets in a specific folder into the dashboard file. Is there a parallel feature in Google Sheets?
posted by philosophygeek to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

From one google sheet to another, =QUERY is great and can absolutely be used to pull data from a different file elegantly using =IMPORTRANGE

From a CSV or another type of file, it's a little trickier. You can use something like Google Apps Script to script it (this example is solid), or apparently there are third-party tools that can help like Sheetgo (no endorsement, I've never used it).

(Full disclaimer: I've never actually used power query myself, so I'm only 80% sure it's the same thing as what you're asking. But I do use google sheets quite a bit.)
posted by mosst at 7:12 AM on October 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

Oops, I take back the second thing I said - apparently IMPORTXML (for XML, CSV, HTML, TSV, RSS, ATOM XML feeds) and IMPORTDATA (for CSV) are also options, though may need some finagling to pull from google drive. TIL!
posted by mosst at 7:18 AM on October 16, 2020

It sounds like Data Studio might help with what you're looking for? I've used it to build a few dashboards for work.
posted by sagc at 8:06 AM on October 16, 2020