Connecting Google Sheets to your Electbase site

What lands in the spreadsheet

A new row is added when someone:

• fills in your sign-up form, your contact form, a yard-sign request, or an endorsement form;
• signs up to volunteer;
• RSVPs to one of your events;
• gives through a donation processor that sends donations back to Electbase (see Connecting ActBlue and Connecting Anedot or Donorbox).

Each row has these columns: Timestamp, Event type, First name, Last name, Email, Phone, Zip, City, Detail, Amount, Source URL. Detail says what happened: the event's name and guest count for an RSVP, or the processor and whether the gift was recurring or refunded for a donation. Amount is filled for donations only. Source URL is the page on your site where it happened.

There is also a hidden twelfth column holding Electbase's own id for the row. Leave it alone: in the rare case a row is added twice after a network hiccup, that column is how you spot the duplicate.

Values are written as plain text, so nothing in a row is ever treated as a formula.

Connecting it in Electbase

1. From your dashboard, open Connections in the top navigation and find the Google Sheets card. Click Connect Google Sheets.
2. Google asks you to sign in and to let Electbase create and edit only the files it makes in your Drive. That is the only permission requested. Approve it.
3. Back on the card, the chip reads Connected, and a spreadsheet named Supporters is already in your Drive.

Rows appear within a few minutes of each signup. Open the spreadsheet in Google Sheets and share it, filter it, or hand it to your data team as you like; it is an ordinary file in your Drive.

Things that break it, and how to recover

• Electbase can't write into a spreadsheet you already have. The permission it asks for reaches only files Electbase created, and there is no file picker. Copy rows across yourself if you need them in an existing workbook.
• Don't rename the Supporters tab. Electbase adds rows by the tab's name. Renaming the spreadsheet file is fine; renaming the sheet tab inside it stops new rows from landing.
• If you delete the spreadsheet (or it ends up in your Drive's trash), new rows have nowhere to go and the card tells you so. Disconnect and reconnect Google Sheets to get a fresh one. Rows that arrived while the file was gone are recorded as failed on our side, so you can see what happened; they are not quietly dropped.
• If Google revokes our access, the card turns yellow and reads that authentication failed. Click Reconnect Google Sheets. Held rows then drain on their own.

Disconnecting

Disconnect Google Sheets destroys our stored sign-in and stops queued rows. The spreadsheet stays in your Drive with everything already in it.

One thing worth understanding: all of Electbase's Google connections on your account (Sheets, Calendar, Search Console) ride a single Google authorization. Disconnecting Sheets revokes that authorization at Google only if no other Google connection on this campaign still uses it. If one does, the card says so and the authorization stays, and you can remove it yourself at myaccount.google.com/permissions when you are done with all of them.

Has this been tested against the real Google Sheets?

Yes. On 2026-09-12 the full round trip ran on a live campaign: the Google consent screen was completed, a real Supporters spreadsheet appeared in the connected Drive, and the stored authorization was then used for a real write. It took two attempts, and both failures were real bugs that nothing in our test suite could see; both were fixed the same day, before this was offered widely. What has not yet been checked end to end is disconnecting and confirming the revocation at Google.

Quick checklist

1. On your Connections page, click Connect Google Sheets and approve the one permission Google asks for.
2. Open your Drive and find the new Supporters spreadsheet.
3. Submit a test signup on your live site and watch for its row.
4. Don't rename the Supporters tab; share the file freely.