Question

Volunteers keep breaking the app by editing the Google Sheet it reads from

Solved · 5 views · asked last month by amara_v · edited

Bolt built a dashboard on top of a Google Sheet. Someone renames a column, the dashboard dies.

Asked the volunteers not to rename columns and protected the header row. They forget, or unprotect it.

1 answer

Marked as helpful by the asker

ines_datalast month · edited

A spreadsheet that people edit is a UI, not a database. Two paths:

Keep the sheet, add a validation layer: a small function that maps columns by header name (not position) and shows a clear "column X missing" message instead of crashing. Cheap, buys time.
Move to a real table (Supabase) and give volunteers a form. A week of work, and the problem is gone forever.

At 300 users I'd do the second one now, while migration is still small.