Google Drive link

Updated November 16, 2023

Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service. Fivetran supports syncing files from your Google Drive to your destination. You can sync multiple files either as unique tables or as a single table in your destination.

Featureslink

Setup guidelink

Follow our step-by-step Google Drive setup guide to connect your Google Drive with your destination using Fivetran connectors.

Sync overviewlink

The Google Drive connector offers dual mode sync strategies. You can opt to:

• sync each file as a unique table in your destination (Magic Folder Mode)
• sync multiple files into a single destination table that you specify (Merge Mode)

We sync all files in the Google Drive folder to your destination, even if someone without a Fivetran account uploaded them. Anyone with write access to the folder can drop files into that folder; Fivetran automatically syncs the files from your Google Drive folder to your destination.

Magic Folder Modelink

We retrieve all the files from the folder that you specify into your destination.

Each file is synced as a separate table in the destination. For spreadsheet files, we sync each worksheet in the spreadsheet as a unique table in your destination.

We don't sync empty worksheets. We don't sync an Excel worksheet if the entire first row of the worksheet is empty. We don't sync a column if its first row is empty.

For Google Sheets, we detect the data range to be synced.

We only sync the files inside the specified folder. We ignore nested folders.

Magic Folder Mode doesn't support incremental syncs. We re-import the files during every sync. We use the last modified date of the files to detect changes in the files of your cloud folder. For information about the sync strategy, see our Magic Folder connectors documentation.

Merge Modelink

We retrieve all the files from each folder and its subfolders into a single table into your destination.

Merge Mode supports incremental syncs.

Syncing spreadsheets Betalink

To sync Excel and Google Sheets files in Merge Mode, you must configure the connector with a defined cell reference. The connector syncs all contiguous data to the right of this cell reference and below it in all the spreadsheets it finds. For example, if your cell reference is "Data"!C3, the connector syncs data from every spreadsheet starting at the "Data" worksheet cell, C3.

We do not support finding data ranges if the rows contain merged cells. We skip the rows with merged cells and do not consider it for finding data ranges.

Schema informationlink

Magic Folder Modelink

If you select the Magic Folder Mode, we use the file name (without the extension) as the destination table name. For example, we sync a sample.csv file as SAMPLE table.

For spreadsheet files, we use a combination of the file name and worksheet name as the destination table name. For example, two worksheets called Sheet1 and Sheet2 in a spreadsheet My Workings are synced as MY_WORKINGS_SHEET_1 and MY_WORKINGS_SHEET_2 tables. We use the values present in the first row of the worksheet as the column names in the destination table.

For more information about the schema and table naming rule set, see our naming conventions documentation.

If we find files of the same name but with different extensions in the folder, we check the last modified dates of the files and sync only the least recently modified file.

Merge Modelink

If you select the Merge Mode, we use the table name that you specify as the destination table name.

Sync limitationslink

We do not sync links to files from the cloud folder. Your Google Drive folder must contain the file.

We don’t sync hyperlink values from a worksheet.

We don't sync worksheets with pivot tables.

We don't sync files uploaded through the Google Drive app.

Google Sheets limitationslink

• We don't change the modification time for Google Sheets that use the IMPORTRANGE function to import the data from the another sheet.
• We don't support incremental syncs for worksheets created using IMPORTRANGE inside Google Drive. We re-import the complete worksheet during every sync.
• If you update the Google Sheets files through Google Forms, the last modified date of the file is not updated. Fivetran depends on the last modified date to check if a Google Sheets file has been updated and therefore may not sync the file regularly. If you sync Google Sheets files populated by Google Forms, make sure that the last modified date is regularly updated.