Apipheny Support

If you have an issue, or if the add-on is not working correctly, it could be because you’re signed in to multiple Google Accounts. Try signing out of your other Google accounts and see if that fixes it. This is a common issue with Google add-ons that Google is aware of but has not fixed yet.

Other ways to fix issues:

1. Try closing the add-on (clicking the x button) and opening it again.
2. Try refreshing the webpage.

If you’d like to let me know about an issue so we can investigate further, email me at support@apipheny.io or chat with me live by clicking on the chat icon in the bottom right corner of this page.

-Meelad Mashaw
Co-founder
Apipheny

Every app that Google approves must go through a strict security & privacy approval process, including ours. When you first install the add-on, you’ll be asked to allow access to three basic permissions that are required for the add-on to work properly.

Our code can only access your data while you’re accessing the add-on. We don’t sync your data to our own servers and we don’t have any direct access to your data. We use Google’s PropertyService which allows us to attach limited data (such as saved API requests) to the spreadsheet itself and to the user, on Google’s servers.

We then use Google Apps Script which runs exclusively on Google servers.

We do not have access to view any of the information stored in your Sheets or any of your saved API information.

Your saved API information gets deleted when you uninstall the add-on.

Privacy Policy

Use the INDIRECT function to resolve the reference error that results from the API data refreshing.

If you run an API request and the add-on says “API Request Running…” for longer than 2 minutes, then it means that your API request is probably entered incorrectly.

The API URL could be incorrect, or headers may be incorrect/missing. Every API is different so it requires troubleshooting.

Depending on the API and how you have entered a request, the API may return an error message letting you know what is missing or incorrect.

If the API returns an error message, the error message will be returned and displayed in the Google Sheet for you.

If the add-on hangs in “API Request Running…”, then the request is incorrect and there is no error message available.

Restart the add-on by clicking the “x” in the upper right corner and then open the add-on again to try your API request again.

Every API is different, so there’s not a single way to connect every API using our software.

Below, under “Tutorials”, you’ll see guides we’ve created for connecting various APIs to Google Sheets using Apipheny, and we’re creating more guides all the time.

If you need help connecting a specific API to Google Sheets, just send us a link to your software’s API documentation so we can take a look.

Then we’ll follow up with specific instructions on connecting your API to Google Sheets.

You can automatically refresh the API data in your Google Sheet every hour, day, week, or month.

You can learn more about the automatic refreshing in Google Sheets here.

We can’t add faster refreshing than every hour because Google limits add-ons to update only once per hour at most, as you can see here: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/triggers/installable#time-driven_triggers

There is a workaround. If you want to refresh the data in your spreadsheet faster than every hour, contact us so we can explain the workaround.

Every saved API request can be used in a custom function as so:

• =APIPHENY(“req-ID#”)

To use the function, you must reference the Saved Request ID #.

To get your request ID #, save your new API request in the “Import” tab (if it’s not saved already).

Then open the saved API request in the “Manage” tab and scroll to bottom to find the request ID #.

Example uses:

• =APIPHENY(“req-ID#”,””,A11)
  • auto-updates whenever A11 is changed
• =APIPHENY(“req-ID#”,”URL_OVERRIDE_HERE”)
  • insert an API URL in place of URL_OVERRIDE_HERE

Click here for more information.

Create an API request based on the value of a cell.

You can reference cells on the spreadsheet in any of the add-on’s form fields by wrapping them within 3 curly braces.

Syntax: {{{SheetName!CellValue}}}

Separate the sheet name and the cell value with an exclamation mark, and wrap both values in 3 open and closed curly brackets.

Examples:

• {{{A1}}} will reference A1 on the current sheet.

If you want to query multiple cells in your API request, then you will create a different API URL for each cell and then paste all of those URLs into the API URL field of the add-on.

For example if I have an API: https://api.example.com?parameter1=value1

If “value1” is a value in cell A1 of my spreadsheet “Sheet1”, then I can format my API URL like this:

https://api.example.com?parameter1={{{Sheet1!A1}}}

Now if I want to query multiple cells, I could create a separate URL for each cell, like so:

https://api.example.com?parameter1={{{Sheet1!A1}}}
https://api.example.com?parameter1={{{Sheet1!A2}}}
https://api.example.com?parameter1={{{Sheet1!A3}}}
https://api.example.com?parameter1={{{Sheet1!A4}}}
https://api.example.com?parameter1={{{Sheet1!A5}}}

Then I can copy and paste all of these URLs into the “API URL” field in the add-on and run my request.

Note: Google has limits to how many API request you can make per minute, so you may run into Google’s limitations if you try to make too many API requests at once.

When you install Apipheny, you’ll get a free 30 day trial. Once the 30 days expire, we ask you to subscribe to an annual or monthly subscription plan.

Payments are submitted in the add-on using a secure Stripe checkout.

Refunds are available up to 30 days from the payment date, for any reason.

When you become a paid user, you have unlimited access to use the add-on.

You can make unlimited API requests (within Google’s limits) and you can use the add-on in as many sheets as you want.

If price is of concern to you, please email us so we can provide you with alternate options.

If you want to cancel your subscription, send an email from the email address you signed up with to support@apipheny.io with “Cancel my Apipheny subscription” in the subject and body of the email.

If you run into any limitations, it could be because Google Sheets has limits, and Google also has limits when using APIs.

Click here for more information.

Question: If i make an API call from a platform, would the pulled data be a direct extract of the database (i.e. 1 row per entry) or can the data be aggregated by a given dimension (geo data, time, channel, etc.)?

Answer: The data will be pulled in one row at a time and you will have to pull in the proper dimension if you want to aggregate the data.

For example, if you are pulling from Google Analytics, you want to make sure to pull in the “day”, “week”, or “month” dimension so the API consolidates that data into one row.

Click here to learn more about making a POST request in Google Sheets using Apipheny.

If your API call requires a date and timestamp, try the following:

In Sheet 1 cell A1 in your Google Sheet, add one of these formulas:

• =(now()-5.5/24-DATE(1970,1,1))*86400000

• =TEXT(now(),”yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss”)

You can try the second formula if the first one does not work.

Then, in your API request, replace the timestamp parameter with the following variable:

• {{{Sheet1!A1}}}

—

Example:

https://api.example.com/v1/getInfo/timestamp

Would become:

https://api.example.com/v1/getInfo/{{{Sheet1!A1}}}

So the API request would use the value in Sheet 1 cell A1 (the timestamp formula) when calling the API. Click here for more info about referencing cells in Google Sheets.

If you open the Apipheny add-on in a new Google spreadsheet, your saved API requests will not automatically transfer over.

This is because saved API requests are tied to the specific spreadsheet, and not to a specific user account.

If you want to export and import your saved API requests to a different Google Spreadsheet, please follow these steps:

1. Open your Google Sheet with your saved API requests that you want to transfer to another sheet
2. Click “Add-ons” in the menu at the top
3. Click “Apipheny” in the menu, then in the Apipheny drop down menu, click “Configure”
4. The Apipheny sidebar will then open up to the “Import / Export Configuration” tab
5. Copy all the contents in the “JSON Export” field
6. Open the Google Sheet that you want to import your saved API requests to
7. Open the “Import / Export Configuration” tab (Add-ons > Apipheny > Configure)
8. In the “JSON Import” field, paste everything you copied from the “JSON Export” field from the other sheet
9. After pasting the “JSON Export” contents into the “JSON Import” field, click the “Import JSON Configuration” button at the bottom of the sidebar
10. Close the Apipheny add-on and then open it again and your saved API requests will have been imported into the new spreadsheet

If after 30 seconds you get an error or pop-up that says “Request Timed Out”, then that means your API request was not entered correctly.

Either your API URL is incorrect, or you have incorrect/missing headers.

If you’re running a POST request, make sure you’ve chosen the “POST” method and that your POST body is entered correctly.

All other errors besides the request time-out error should be returned directly in the spreadsheet.

This error means that the Sheet Name in the API Request does not match the Sheet Name in your Google Sheets.

Soon we’re changing this error message to say: “Error: The target sheet no longer exists. Please update the Sheet Name for this request.”

Make sure the Sheet Name in your API Request is spelled exactly the same as the name of the sheet that you’re trying to import data into.