Automating tasks with Google Sheets can significantly enhance productivity and efficiency. One common scenario involves triggering actions based on data changes in Google Sheets. There are two primary triggers you can leverage: the Google Sheets change trigger and the list trigger. Understanding the difference between these two can help you choose the right approach for your needs. Let’s dive into how each trigger works and when to use them.

The Google Sheets change trigger is ideal for scenarios where you want to trigger an automation based on new data entries. For instance, if you maintain a list of customers in a Google Sheet, and each time a new customer is added, a new row is added to this list. You might want to automate an action such as filling out a form for this new customer.

Here’s how it works:

On the other hand, the list trigger is suited for scenarios where you have existing data that you need to process in bulk. Suppose you have a comprehensive list of your customers, and you want to send each customer an individual email or text message. The list trigger will help you achieve this by looping over each row in your Google Sheet and performing the desired action for every single entry.

Here’s how it works:

The list trigger operates by utilizing multiple rows of data in sequential order. For example:

This method is particularly advantageous because it runs through all rows in the Google Sheet efficiently, without the need for constant restarting.

In conclusion, selecting the right trigger depends on the specific requirements of your automation:

By understanding the distinct functionalities and use cases of each trigger, you can effectively automate tasks in Google Sheets, saving time and ensuring that your processes run smoothly.

Automating with Google Sheets can transform how you handle data, whether it's bringing in new entries or processing existing information. Choose the right trigger and watch your productivity soar!

Step 1- Click on the icon of trigger to change

Step 2- Either click on Google sheets or List to select

Step 3- Two google sheets used for collecting data and to exporting for automation

So the difference between something like the Google Sheets trigger and the list trigger, which both are accessible from inside of your automation, you can click on your trigger here to change it. We can either use the Google Sheets trigger for things like new row, updated row. Or we can use the list trigger to loop over a bunch of items in a Google Sheet.

So the difference between the two is let's say that I had a list of my customers and every time I get a new customer, I'm going to have a new row added to my Google Sheet. And when this new row is added to my Google Sheet, I want to go run an automation, like filling out a form for this user. Okay. This would be using the new row trigger so that every time a new row gets added, we run the automation.

If we have a list of all of our customers, and let's say we wanted to loop over every single customer here and send them a text message or an email. Or basically we want to run our automation for each person. Then we want to use the list trigger. The list trigger allows us to use multiple rows of data at one time, and what it does is it runs this row.

It will run row two and use row two's data. Then it'll, without closing the browser, run row three again without closing the browser. Start running row four and it'll go through every row in your Google sheet. Depending on the settings that you give it so that you can iterate through everything instead of the alternative, which is running it when a new row is added.

So very different between the two. One is for basically new incoming data. And then the other is basically usually when you have a bunch of preexisting data and you want to loop over that, repeat some steps for it, follow back up, things like that.