Sharing and managing in Google Sheets

What this gives you

• Manage contacts in Google Sheets — scanned cards arrive as rows, with the spreadsheet’s own sorting, filtering and search
• Share one sheet across a team — the owner shares the sheet and every member’s PixWork syncs with it
• Run your pipeline in the sheet — Status, Assignee and Next Action Date are managed on the sheet side, and what you set there shows up in the app
• Look people up on a phone — the contacts kept in the sheet are searchable in PixWork on a phone, so someone out on a visit can pull up a person, who owns them and where things stand without opening a spreadsheet
• Connect the customer list you already keep — point PixWork at a sheet you already use, without rebuilding its columns

Three fields the sheet owns

Status, Assignee and Next Action Date are read-only in the app. The sheet is always authoritative for them; the app reads and displays them.

That is the intended division of work: the team decides ownership and timing in the spreadsheet, and people in the field read it on their phones.

The Status options and what each one means are on "Google Sheets column layout". On a sheet you connected yourself, these three take part in the sync only if you mapped a column to each of them when you connected it.

What the Google account is asked for

When you turn on the Google Sheets connection, one additional permission is requested: drive.file. That scope reaches only files this app created and files you explicitly picked in the file picker.

It does not list your Drive and does not read files you did not pick. Nothing is requested for Sheets at ordinary sign-in.

Choosing a sheet — a new one, or the one you already use

A sheet is selected through Google’s standard file picker. There is no way to connect by typing in a spreadsheet ID or URL. The picker offers Google Sheets only, so an Excel or CSV file sitting in Drive cannot be picked.

To create a new one, choose the create option in the app and the tabs and columns it needs are set up for you.

To connect a sheet you already use, its columns do not have to be rebuilt into PixWork’s layout. On connecting, PixWork shows a "Column mapping (auto-detected)" list pairing your own headers with its fields; you check it and press "Connect with this mapping". Anything it could not place is listed under "Columns not synced (kept as-is)" and is left out of the sync entirely.

That mapping is stored in a settings tab called _pixwork_map inside the same spreadsheet. Everyone using the sheet reads the same mapping, on every device, so there is nothing to set up phone by phone.

_pixwork_map can be edited directly in Google Sheets. The tab holding the contact data (data_sheet), the row the headers sit on (header_row), and which of your headers goes to which PixWork field are all set there — and a column that was not detected automatically starts syncing once you fill its row in. The field names and what they mean are on "Google Sheets column layout".

What connecting adds to the sheet

Connecting a sheet you already use adds exactly three things. The confirmation screen lists them, and pressing "Connect with this mapping" is what adds them. Your existing tabs, columns, order and values are not modified.

A column you did not map is neither read nor written, so internal notes and formula columns stay as they are. If the mapping is missing, malformed, or names a column that is not in the data tab, PixWork does not guess at a column — it stops the sync and says why.

Sharing with a team

The sheet’s owner grants edit access to each member’s account through Google Sheets’ own "Share" feature.

Each member then picks that same shared sheet from Settings via "Select from Google Drive". From then on everyone’s PixWork syncs with the same sheet.

View-only access cannot be saved as a sync target, because syncing writes.

How the two-way sync works

Syncing is something you do by hand. Pressing sync compares the phone and the sheet, and flags only the fields where both sides have a conflicting change. When conflicts exist, you’re shown a screen to choose "keep phone" or "keep sheet" before anything is written.

If a field on the phone is empty, the app never overwrites a value that already exists in the sheet with that empty value.

A row that is in the sheet but not yet on the phone is brought onto the device by the sync, as long as it falls inside the scope described in the next section. In the other direction, the app never deletes a row from your sheet.

Which contacts get synced

In PixWork 1.1.2, contacts updated within the last 90 days are synced. Anything older than that is not.

Falling outside that window does not remove anything already saved — it only means the next sync leaves it alone. Share that scope with your team if you run the sheet together.

Common errors

These are the messages as the app shows them. In every one of these cases nothing is written to the sheet until the cause is cleared.

• "The linked spreadsheet has no _pixwork_map settings sheet" — the tab holding the column mapping is missing. Re-selecting the spreadsheet in Settings → Team Sync creates it
• "A column named in _pixwork_map was not found in the data sheet’s header row" — the mapping points at a header the data tab does not have, which is what a renamed or deleted column produces. Line the column cells in _pixwork_map back up with your real headers
• "No column is mapped to Name in _pixwork_map" — the name column is the one field that must be mapped. Put your data tab’s header for it in the Name row of _pixwork_map
• "The Companies sheet does not match the PixWork format (14 columns)" — Companies is read and written by column position, so a reorder or a rename stops the sync. Check the names and the order on "Google Sheets column layout"
• "Sync was stopped for safety because the sheet kept being changed by other members" — other team members were editing the same sheet while the sync ran. Wait a moment and sync again
• "Some fields were not overwritten because the sheet has different values" — appears when syncing a single contact from its own screen and both the phone and the sheet hold a differing value. Run the two-way sync from the Library screen and settle it on the conflict screen