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Tips to Speed Up Google Docs 'Add to Spreadsheet' Function
Are there any tricks to speeding up the Add to Spreadsheet column for google docs? It can take all day to push in a couple hundred rows
Are there any tricks to speeding up the Add to Spreadsheet column for google docs? It can take all day to push in a couple hundred rows
Google Sheets integrations have low rate limits - there's a default limit of 300 read requests per minute per project. If your integration exceeds this limit, Google temporarily blocks further requests until the quota resets (typically after a minute). Since the quota resets every minute, the best option is to retry the request after a brief pause when you hit rate limits.
Hmmm mine is writing at like 1 or 2 a minute
Is there anyway to set up batching in the push?
That's much slower than expected. The Google Sheets API has a 300 requests per minute limit, so you should be able to write much faster than 1-2 rows per minute.
If you're using Google Apps Script to push data, check the Utilities.sleep() value in your script - it controls the delay between each row. The default is often set to 1000 milliseconds (1 second), which would limit you to about 60 rows per minute.
Try reducing this sleep value to speed up your writes, but keep some delay to avoid hitting rate limits.
The Google Apps Script approach doesn't support true batching - it processes rows one at a time with a delay between each.
You can adjust the Utilities.sleep() value to control timing between rows, but it must be at least 100ms due to Clay's 10 requests/second webhook limit.
For faster processing, consider reducing the sleep value while staying above the minimum threshold, but each row will still be sent individually rather than in batches.
I am not using a webhook setup, but the native clay Add to Spreadsheet
The native Clay "Add Row with Google Sheets" action doesn't support batching - it processes rows individually. Our Google Sheets integration includes actions like Add Rows, Lookup Rows, and Lookup, Add or Update Rows, but these are designed to work row by row rather than in batches. The speed you're experiencing (1-2 rows per minute) is significantly slower than expected for the native integration. This could be due to Google Sheets API rate limits or other factors affecting the connection between Clay and your Google Sheet. Are you experiencing any error messages or timeouts when the Add to Spreadsheet column is running?
Hello Jill! Thanks for reaching out! How long has it been queued up for? This might be a bug I would like the eng team to take a look at. Want to make sure I have all the context I need.
So I am pushing in like 250 into a spreadsheet and it's taken 2 hours now. There may be a better approach to this, let me know if doing a webhook or other setup would be faster too
Got it! Let me talk to the eng team and get back to you!
Thanks!!
Jill - Sorry for this, it looks like we've got a bug on our hands. I've escalated this to our engineering team to help look into it. We'll follow up here as soon as we know more!
Ok thanks so much for getting this figured out.