Google Sheets

Using data from Google Sheets or CSV

Key concept: When you use a Google Sheet / CSV, Dextrous will fill out your deck of cards with data from each column where the cell in row 1 matches the zone name in the Component's layout .
All other columns you have in Google sheets are ignored, so you can use these for whatever you want.

Connecting G sheets to a component

    In Google sheets, click File > Share > Publish to web:
    In the Publish to web popup menu:i) select the sheet tab you're working in (not 'Entire document') ii) select Comma-separated value as the embed typeiii) Click the Publish button and copy the url link that gets generated.
    Back in Dextrous, go to the component that you want to link to your Google sheet.a) Click 'link this component to a csv'b) in the popup menu, paste in your CSV link and hit the Import data! button.
    Now that you've connect the component to the Google sheet, you can hit the Refresh CSV button to pull in new data from your Google sheet!
And just like that, you're all connected to Google sheets!
Note: Google sheets automatically republishes changes to the CSV link when you make changes in the Google sheet, but it's on a 5-min rolling timer. So if you click the refresh CSV button and don't see your changes, just wait a minute and try again.
Troublshooting tip: You can always paste the Google sheets link straight into the browser, and that will download a CSV txt file - then you can check the csv data and see if your latest changes are in fact present in the data.
Checkout the tutorial and other notes below for more advanced tips like styling etc.


Tutorial

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to import Google Sheets data into Dextrous and link it to a layout so you can create games faster than ever. You'll also learn how to do some basic text formatting from the Google Sheets side.

Reserved Column names

There are some special reserved column names that have specific purposes (not zone-related):
    Copies - this controls the amount of each card that you want in the deck.
    Nickname - used for png file export naming as well as TTS nicknames.
    Card Description - used for TTS card description.
    Card TTS Data - used for controlling custom properties on a card-by-card basis for TTS.
    Project variables - used to define the variable names (tip: use names like $attack or $hp to avoid conflicting with other words in your project).
    Project variables text - used to define the replacement text for exach variable name above.
You don't need to include these columns in your Google sheet, but they're handy to know about.

Google sheet example

Here is a simple example table of data with data for 2 cards:
copies
nickname
img
title
description
3
Goondalf
myFolder/wizard.png
Goodalf Grey Eye
Goondalf gets **+2 awe** whenever he is adjacent to *gunpowder* units.
2
Fishman
myFolder/fishy.png
Mer Warrior
Mer Warrior has *slippery* when played on a water space.

Styling with Google Sheets

When you're using Google sheets, the csv data can't contain any rich-text, so you need to use markdown or custom text styles to get styling to come through to Dextrous.

Basic styling:

Here is the supported markdown for the basic styles:
*italic*
**bold**
***bolditalic***
__underline__
~~strikethrough~~
  • Linebreak - to get a linebreak you can use a ctrl+enter in Google sheets.
paragraph 1 in G sheets
paragraph 2 in G sheets
  • Paragraph - to get a new paragraph from G sheets, use a ctrl+enter, then a /, then another ctrl+enter, like this:
paragraph 1 in G sheets
/
paragraph 2 in G sheets

Complex styling

For more complex styling, you can use  ⁠⁠Custom Text Styles⁠ .

Copying data from Dextrous to Google sheets

Sometimes you might want to export to CSV or clipboard from Dextrous. You can copy all the data from your component table by:
    Clicking the table settings cog button (top left of the table in Dex)
    Selecting 'copy table data to clipboard'
    Pasting into Google sheets (or Excel etc.)

Managing multiple tabs in Google sheets

Often you will want to make a project which has a different set of Google sheet data and link it to different components in Dextrous. Here are two good options:

Option A: Using different tabs in your Google sheet.

This option is very simple, keeps your different components (ie card types) in separate tabs in G sheet:Here's the process:
    Put your different card types in different tabs in G-sheet. For each tab do the following:
    When publishing to web as CSV, check the link is publishing only the current tab (in this example, the 'actions' tab).
    Copy the CSV link
    Select the Dextrous component
    Click the Import CSV data icon
    Paste in your link.
Now you can click the import all CSVs button to pull in data for any and all components that you've set up in steps 1-6.

Option B: Using pivot tables.

This option is slightly harder to setup, but lets you keep all components in single tab in Google sheets. Here's a vid of how to do it:
This option is particularly useful if you want to make different decks from the same pool of cards.