This article covers Sheetgo Automations — the Google Sheets extension (Extensions > Sheetgo > Automations).
Sheetgo's append feature adds new rows to the destination without replacing existing data. Over time, this creates a historical database.
How does append work?
In Sheetgo, append replaces the default behavior for data transfers. By default, transfers replace existing information in destination files. But if you turn on append, new data is placed in new rows and existing data is never lost.
This allows you to:
Keep old data entries.
Track changes in a dynamic data set.
Create historical charts and reports.
Monitor ever-changing values.
Avoid duplicates when appending data
If your source has the same information every time you transfer data, append can generate unwanted duplicates. One way to avoid this is to include a date column in the source file and use a filter to append only new rows since the last run.
Tip: If your source sheet has a "date" column, combine append with filter processors to transfer only data from a specific time period.
The append feature in action
Let's say we want to track team members' weekly spending. Each user is given a budget, and we record their spending periodically.
To monitor how spending increases over the month, we use append to track historical data weekly. After a week, the destination spreadsheet accumulates all records:
With this historical data you can create dashboards, track trends over time, and build reports that reflect how values change from run to run.