I’m working on a Python script to grab data from Google Sheets. The tricky part is dealing with formulas that don’t play nice with Excel. My code can download the sheet as an Excel file, but it messes up when there are incompatible formulas.
I want to check the cell values before downloading to avoid these issues. Here’s a simplified version of what I’ve got so far:
import gspread
from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials
scope = ['https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds']
creds = ServiceAccountCredentials.from_json_keyfile_name('secret_key.json', scope)
client = gspread.authorize(creds)
sheet = client.open('MySpreadsheet').sheet1
# Need help here to read cell formulas
print('Done!')
Any ideas on how to read the actual formulas in each cell? Thanks!
Having worked extensively with Google Sheets and Python, I can suggest an alternative approach using the sheets.get method from the Google Sheets API v4. This method allows you to retrieve the full sheet data, including formulas.
Here’s a basic implementation:
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from google.oauth2 import service_account
SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.readonly']
SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE = 'path/to/service_account.json'
creds = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(
SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE, scopes=SCOPES)
service = build('sheets', 'v4', credentials=creds)
spreadsheet_id = 'your_spreadsheet_id'
range_name = 'Sheet1!A1:Z1000' # Adjust as needed
result = service.spreadsheets().get(spreadsheetId=spreadsheet_id,
ranges=range_name,
includeGridData=True).execute()
# Parse result to extract formulas
# You'll need to iterate through result['sheets'][0]['data'][0]['rowData']
This approach gives you direct access to cell formulas, allowing you to handle incompatible ones before export.
I’ve tackled a similar challenge before, and I found that using the Google Sheets API directly gives you more control over formula extraction. Here’s what worked for me:
Instead of gspread, try using the googleapiclient library. You can fetch the sheet data including formulas with a GET request to the sheets.spreadsheets.get endpoint.
The tricky part is parsing the response, as it returns a nested structure. You’ll need to iterate through the ‘sheets’ and ‘data’ fields to access individual cell formulas.
One gotcha to watch out for: some cells might not have a ‘userEnteredValue’ field if they’re empty or only contain formatting. Make sure to handle those cases in your code.
This approach lets you inspect formulas before deciding whether to proceed with the Excel export. It’s a bit more work upfront, but it saved me a ton of headaches down the line.