#Spreadsheet converter reddit how to#
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It has a free tier and looks like a really useful tool for anyone who does a lot of web scraping.ДЄs always, leave any comments, corrections or request other social media statistics below.

ThereвЂ™s an add-on called ImportFromWeb that is like a better, more powerful version of the ImportXML function.

Google documentation on the IMPORTDATA function.

Google documentation on the IMPORTHTML function.

Google documentation on the IMPORTXML function.

A guide to the QUERY function in Google Sheets.

A basic introduction to web scraping using the Google IMPORT formulas.

Whilst researching this article, I came across several older articles where many of the formulas no longer work. I can make no guarantee that these will work for you or into the future. IвЂ™ve found that adding or removing the final вЂњ/вЂќ from the URL can sometimes get the formula working again (the issue is to do with caching). These formulas are unstable and will sometimes display an error message. If you work with them a lot, sooner or later youвЂ™ll find yourself hitting this loading issue all the time, where the formulas stop displaying any results:

#Spreadsheet converter reddit how to#

In the meantime, check out my post on how to get started with APIs, or for a peak at whatвЂ™s coming, take a look at my Apps Script + API repo on GitHub.ДЄlso, even when these formulas are working, they can be temperamental. IвЂ™ll be posting some API focussed articles soon. Yes, this involves coding, but itвЂ™s not as hard as you think. Otherwise, youвЂ™re next option is to venture down the API route. If anyone knows of any clever way to get around this, do share!

#Spreadsheet converter reddit code#

You can see the code for my site has lots of tags which the IMPORT formulas can parse, whereas the other siteвЂ™s code does not. Versus what the source code looks for this page on my website (click to enlarge): The IMPORT formulas work fine on sites built in the traditional fashion, with lots of well formed HTML tags, where the social media statistics are embedded into the site markup that is passed from the server.Д¬ompare this screenshot of the source code for Mobcrush, built using Angular JS it looks like (click to enlarge): These are all modern sites built using front-end, client-side Javascript frameworks, so the IMPORT formulas canвЂ™t extract any data because the page is built dynamically in browser as itвЂ™s loaded up. IвЂ™ve tried the following sites but the IMPORT formulas are unable to extract the social media statistics: There is no example sheet for Linkedin since the formula is no longer working. Here is the Google Sheets REGEX formula to extract page likes: Start with the mobile Facebook page URL in cell A1, e.g. November 2018 update: The Facebook formula is working again! The trick is to use the mobile URL рџ‰ Thanks to reader Mark O. The formulas below are generally set up to return the number of followers (or page likes) for a given channel, but you could adapt them to return other metrics (such as follows) with a little extra work.Д¬aveats: these formulas occasionally stop working when the underlying website changes, but I will try to keep this post updated with working versions for the major social media statistics.Д®xample workbooks: Each example has a link to an associated Google Sheet workbook, so feel free to make your own copy: File > Make a copy. How to import social media statistics into Google Sheets with formulas If you manage a lot of different channels then you could use these techniques to set up a master view (dashboard) to display all your metrics in one place. This article looks at importing social media statistics from popular social media channels into a Google sheet, for social network analysis or social media management. Google Sheets has a powerful and versatile set of IMPORT formulas that can import social media statistics.