Exports and history
Export to Google Sheets
Rows can go straight into a Google Sheet rather than a file. There is one prerequisite, and it is the step people miss: the sheet has to be shared so that the exporter can write to it. But it is worth doing properly once, because sheets you have used before are remembered. After the first time, sending a list into the same spreadsheet is a couple of clicks.
Create or open a Google Sheet
Any sheet you own will do. The export writes into its own new tab rather than overwriting anything already in the document.
Share it so the link can edit
Set the sheet’s sharing to allow anyone with the link to edit. Without edit access on the link, the export cannot write and will fail.
Copy the sheet’s link
Use the ordinary share link. It is checked before anything is written, so a wrong link fails immediately rather than half way through.
Run the export
Paste the link and export. Rows stream into a new tab in that sheet.
Keep going into the same tab
The box stays open after an export and offers you the next range. Everything you take in one sitting lands in one tab, with the serial number carrying on from where the last batch stopped, so four exports give you one clean sheet rather than four fragments to stitch together.
Reuse it next time
Sheets you have used before are remembered, so you do not paste the link again.
Worth knowing
- Anyone with the link can edit is a permanent setting on your document, not a temporary grant for the moment of the export. Tighten it again afterwards if the sheet holds anything sensitive.
- Exports are written through one shared account, so a very large export is paced rather than fired all at once. It will finish; it may not finish instantly.
- Re-sending a past export from your history into a sheet is free. It is the same rows you already paid for.
- If a sheets export is interrupted part way, running it again continues from the row it reached rather than writing everything a second time. An export appends, so a blind retry would duplicate every row already written — it does not.
- Google refuses any single cell longer than 50,000 characters, and rejects the whole export when it meets one. A very small number of shops have a description that long. Those cells are trimmed to fit and you are told how many were shortened, so one unusual row cannot cost you the export.
Try this on the real database
Free trial with the full dataset and every filter, and the allowance resets daily rather than expiring.