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Live data from a sheet
Put a range of one of your spreadsheets inside a document as a table, a single number or a chart, and it stays right as the sheet changes.
On this page
A live block is a piece of one of your spreadsheets, shown inside a document. You pick a sheet, a tab and a range, and the document draws it. When somebody edits the sheet the block follows, so the figure in your report is the figure in the sheet rather than the one it was on the day you pasted it.
- 1
Open Insert in the formatting bar
Then Live block. If it is not in the menu, it has not been switched on for your account yet.
- 2
Pick a sheet
Search it by name. It has to be a spreadsheet you can already open yourself.
- 3
Pick the tab and type the range
A range such as
A1:C10, or a single cell when you only want one number. - 4
Choose how it looks, then insert it
A display, a caption, a header row and how wide it sits on the page. The block lands where the cursor was, with the sheet's values already in it.
How it can be shown#
| Display | What you get |
|---|---|
| Table | The range as a table, with the first row as a header if you want one, and optional striped rows. |
| Metric | One value, large, with a label of your own under it. |
| Inline | A compact table that sits in the run of the text rather than breaking it. |
| Bar chart | A bar per row. The first column becomes the labels and the first column of numbers becomes the values. |
| Line chart | The same reading of the range, drawn as a line. |
A chart reads the range the obvious way round: the first column is the labels along the bottom, and the first column of numbers is what is drawn.
Every display is in the panel, both when you insert a block and when you edit one later. The quickest way to change your mind is on the block itself: hover it, and the small switch in the strip along its top flips it between a table, a metric, a bar chart and a line chart in place, so you can try a range as a chart and decide it reads better as a table without opening anything.
It keeps itself right#
- The block follows the sheet while you have the document open. Somebody correcting a number in Sheets changes what your paragraph says about it, in front of you.
- Hover the block and a quiet strip appears: Open sheet goes to the spreadsheet, Refresh fetches it again now, and Edit block reopens the panel to change the range.
- Deleting the block changes nothing in the sheet. It was never a copy.
A document you publish to the web shows the block as a snapshot, taken fresh on every visit: a reader gets what the sheet said the moment they opened the page, and no way through to the spreadsheet itself.
Related
Still stuck? Email support@nemilab.com and tell us what you were trying to do.