Connect your Google Drive account

To connect your Google Drive account, click Authorize to login with your Google account credentials.

Setting up the step

Use the file selector to select which file to pull data from

If you have multiple dataset sheets (tabs) in a file, specify which one you'd like to pull in by clicking on the dropdown menu under the file name.

You can also select to skip rows or columns of your choosing. This will skip rows from top-down and columns from left-to-right.

Helpful tips

• This step pulls data in exactly as it is shown in Google Drive. Formatted dates and numbers will be pulled in and shown in their formatted state. Visual formatting, such as colors, font changes, or sizing will not show up in Parabola.
• Any changes you make to the Google Drive file will be automatically updated when you run a flow, or manually updated if you click the refresh icon to the right of the step's name.
• This step can access any file in any Drive that your Google account has authorization to access.
• Google Sheets is unable to parse names that contain colons. Replace colons in the name of the sheet with an underscore or period to remove any colons.
• Other teammates who have access to a Flow where you have authenticated your Google account will not be able to see any other files in your Google Drive. If they want to update the file that the step is using, they will need to authenticate and select a file from their own Google Drive.

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Connect your Google Sheets account

To connect to your Google account, click Authorize to login with your Google account credentials.

Setting up the step

Select how you want this step to export data:

• Add data to an existing file (by overwriting the file or appending data to the bottom)
• Create a new file to write data to
• Create a new file on every run

Once you’ve selected a file to add data to, or have created a new file, select a sheet to send data to (one for each input to the Send to Google Sheets step).

When creating a new file or creating a new file on every run, you can select to create that file in the root of your Drive, or within a specific folder.

Helpful tips

• To ensure your header column titles carry over to your sheet, be sure to overwrite a sheet once. Any appending afterwards will still keep the header column titles. However, if you append to a blank sheet, header column titles won't be included in the exported data.
• This export step can accept multiple input sources, but here are a couple useful things to know. If you want your input sources to be exported to the same sheet, use the Stack tables step to combine your data set before sending it to the Send to Google Sheets step. If you want your input sources to be exported to different sheets, you'll have the option to select the specific sheet that your inputs should send data to.
• Anyone with access to the Google Sheet file will be able to see and use the updated datasets.
• This step can access any file in any drive that your Google account has authorization to access.
• Google Sheets has a 10 million cell limit. Any data being sent through a Send to Google Sheets step will need to be within that cell limit.
• Other teammates who have access to a Flow where you have authenticated your Google account will not be able to see any other files in your Google Drive. If they want to update the file that the step is using, they will need to authenticate and select a file from their own Google Drive.

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Connect your Google account

1. Add the Send to Google Drive step to your flow.
2. Open the step and click Authorize.
3. Sign in with your Google account credentials to complete the connection.

Choose your export mode

Select how you want the step to handle files:

• Overwrite an existing file
• Append to an existing file (Google Sheets only)
• Create a new file (static name/dynamic name)
• Create a new file on every run (static name/dynamic name)
  
  • Parabola will automatically add a dynamic timestamp to file names for the "create a new file on every run" option to avoid collisions. The dynamic timestamp will look like this 2025-09-30 16:41:19Z and the timezone is set to UTC.

File type behavior

• Google Sheets
  • Can be overwritten, appended to, or created new.
  • Multiple inputs can populate different tabs in the same file.
  • Subject to Google’s 10 million cell limit.
• Excel (.xlsx)
  • Can be overwritten or created new.
  • Multiple inputs can populate different tabs.
• CSV (.csv)
  • Can be overwritten or created new.
  • Accepts only a single input (no tabs).

File location

When creating new files, choose the location:

• Place it in the root of your Drive.
• Or specify a folder.

This step can access any file or folder in any Drive your Google account has access to (My Drive or Shared Drives).

Dynamic file names with merge tags

Use merge tags to insert dynamic values into the file name. Wrap the column name in {}.

Examples:

• report_{date} → report_2025-09-30.csv
  
  • Please note that {date} is referencing a column called {date}. It is not a dynamic variable. You could use Add date & time to add a dynamic date column that you can then reference in your file name.
• sales_{Region} → sales_APAC.xlsx

Notes:

• Merge tags are supported in the file name field only (not in sheet/tab names).

Helpful tips

• Headers when appending: Overwrite the sheet once to establish headers. If you append to a blank sheet, headers won’t be included.
• Appending functionality: Appending to an existing file is only supported for Google Sheets. New rows will always be appended to the bottom of the existing dataset.
• Combining inputs:
  • To send multiple inputs to the same sheet, use the Stack tables step first.
  • To send multiple inputs to different sheets, configure each input to map to a specific tab.
• File access: Anyone with access to the target Google Sheet will see updated data after export.
• Team permissions: Other teammates using your flow cannot browse your Drive. They’ll need to re-authenticate with their own Google account if they want to update the connected file.

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