Skip to main content

How to Email Spreadsheets Automatically on a Recurring Schedule

Introducing Email Spreadsheets, a Google Sheets add-on that lets you automate the reporting of spreadsheet data and dashboards by email. If you are an office worker who has been emailing spreadsheets to colleagues manually, this add-on will save you a ton of time. And because it runs on the Google Cloud, your spreadsheet reports will be delivered even while you are offline or on vacation.

With Email Spreadsheets, you can schedule reports and it will automatically send them by email on a recurring schedule. You can email entire workbooks, specific sheets inside a workbook or even range of cells. Watch the video tutorial to get started.

Email Google Sheets Automatically

Go to the Google add-on store and install Email Google Sheets. Next, open any Google Spreadsheet in your Google Drive, go to the Add-ons menu inside the sheet, choose Email Spreadsheets from the dropdown and then choose Rules to create your first scheduled email report.

You are presented with a 3-step wizard to help the email schedule of your spreadsheet report.

Step 1: Select Sheet Export Options

Google Sheet - Export Options

  1. Expand the “Select Sheets” dropdown and select one or more sheets that you would like to include in the email. Each sheet is attached as a separate file in the email but you can choose the “Merge all sheets” option to create a single file from all sheets in the workbook.
  2. Select the export format. You can choose between PDF, Excel (xlsx), OpenDocument or CSV formats. The “Email without Attachment” option can be used to embed a specific range of cells in the email body without including any sheet as an attachment.
  3. If you have selected PDF as the export format in step 2, you are presented with a few more options. For instance, you can change the paper orientation (Portrait or Landscape), the paper size or alter the print margins to fit more content on a page. You can choose to show gridlines, notes, sheet names and page numbers in the exported file.
  4. (optional) The Cell Range option lets you specify a range in A1 notation and only that range will be exported in the PDF file.

Tip: Use the Preview button to test how your exported files would be like with the various export options.

Step 2: Write the Email Template

Email Template with Dynamic Sheet Cell Values


Next, we create an email template that will be sent with your reports. You can specify one or email recipients in the TO, CC, or BCC fields. Multiple email addresses should be separated by a comma.

You can also specify dynamic email recipients based on cell values in the spreadsheet. For instance, if the email address of the recipient is specified in cell B2 of a sheet titled “Employee Shifts”, you can put {{Employee Shifts!B2}} in the To field, and the add-on will pull the dynamic value from the cell at the time of sending the email report.

These dynamic cell values enclosed inside double curly braces can be used inside any of the email fields including subject, email body, and the sender’s name.

The email body can include dynamic cell values as well as ranges that make it easy of you to send portions of the spreadsheet without sharing the full workbook. For instance, you can write {{Employee Wages!B2:F9}} to include only the specific range (B2:F9) from the Wages sheet. Internally, the add-on converts the range to an HTML table, retaining all the display formatting with CSS, and embed it into the email.

You can also include standard HTML tags like H1, IMG, A, B, EM and more to include images and rich formatting in your emails.

Tip: Use the Test Email button to send an email with the exported files before setting up the schedule.

C: Create the Email Schedule

Email Sheets Daily, Hourly, Weekly or Monthly

The Google Sheets add-on includes a scheduler to help you set up recurring schedules visually. You can send email hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or even on a yearly recurring basis.

It is also possible to setup advanced schedules like:

  • Send a recurring email on the last working day of the month.
  • Send email reports every alternate day and end the reporting after 15 days.
  • Set up a quarterly schedule and send email reports on the first Monday of the quarter.
  • That’s it. After specifying the schedule, hit the Save button and your email report will be scheduled.

    If you would like to edit your current email report or schedule a new report, go the add ons menu again, choose Email Spreadsheets and Rules.

    DOWNLOAD EMAIL SHEETS

    Email Google Sheets - How it works?

    The add-on is written in Google Apps Script. It uses the Google Sheets API to convert sheets to PDF files and uses the Gmail API for sending the converted files as attachments.

    SHARE ON: Share on TwitterShare on WhatsAppShare on FacebookShare on Pocket

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Let People Quickly Save your Events on their Calendars

Create Add to Calendar links for emails and websites and let users quickly save your events on their own Google Calendar, Outlook or Yahoo Calendar. You are organizing an online event - maybe a meeting on Zoom or a training session hosted on Google Meet - and you would like the attendees to add the event to their own calendars. Once added to their calendar, the event will act as an automatic reminder and attendees will get a notification when the conference is about to start. There are two way to go about this: You can create a new meeting in your online calendar (Google, Outlook or any other calendar) and add the individual attendees as guests so the event automatically gets added to their calendar as well. You can include an “Add to Calendar” link or button in your email messages,  forms  and website pages. Anyone can click the link to quickly save your event on to their calendars - see  live demo . Create Add to Calendar Links for Emails and Websites The  Add to C...

How to Determine if your Mobile Phone will work in Another Country?

You are planning to buy a cell phone from an online shopping site of another country but are not too sure if that phone will work with the mobile networks of your country. Or consider a slightly different scenario. You are travelling but how do you determine if your existing cellphone will be compatible with carriers of the foreign country? Will that Cell Phone Work in my Country? Well, there are basically two factors that may help you determine if a mobile phone will work with cellular operators of another country or not. Here they are: 1. GSM and CDMA are the two most prevalent standards in the mobile world. As a first step, determine the technology (GSM or CDMA) used by the mobile carrier of the foreign country where you are planning to use your phone. Wikipedia has dedicated sections - see pages for  India ,  Europe  and  Asia Pacific  countries - that list the standards used by various carriers of a particular country. If that carrier is on G...