How to remove empty rows in Appsheet Database?

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
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1

For some reason, one of my automation/scripts is creating empty rows in one of my tables in my Appsheet Database (another issue I need to resolve as well).

I didn’t notice it and now it accumulated to more than 10,000 empty rows.

I could delete them manually, 500 at a time, but is there a better way to do this?

I saw this: Automatically delete empty rows with AppScript (Code Snipped) ,but I think this one is only for spreadsheets as database. I could try Appsheet API, but I’m not sure if it’s possible to delete empty rows using it.

2

Since the rows are totally blank, I believe even Appsheet API may not work because there is simply no reference (such as a key or other column values) to delete the totally blank rows.

One option you could try is , you could

  1. Copy all the records from the ASDB table with “control + A”

  2. Paste those records to a Google sheet.

  3. Then in the Google sheet it will be easier to delete the blank rows even manually and at one go. To accumulate all the blank rows in sequence, you could use a filter or sort in the Google sheets.

  4. Then the remaining rows will be non- blank rows for you. It is essential to sort the rows again in the original order that was in the ASDB table ( May be by a date time value or something that you are able to use). However if you use a Google sheets filter, you may not need to again sort those in the initial order as the original sort order will not be disturbed.

  5. You can then again paste the Google sheet table values back to the ASDB table.

Important Note: I tried this approach on a small ASDB table. If you wish to use this approach, please test it well on a test table first to familiarize and satisfy yourself with the steps and proceed with production table with the utmost care, with backups etc.

It is also possible that the Google sheet may not accommodate all your ASDB table rows, if the table is too big in terms of rows and columns, if Google sheets cell limit is reached. Then the above suggested approach will not work.

3

Also not sure, why automation is creating blank rows in the ASDB. Typically with ASDB, the row seems to be getting physically deleted at least with actions delete.

4

Hello @ralph.christian,

My suggestion here is to contact support so that they can further analyze the situation. Note that it might be the case that support team needs access to your application, you can enable the same following the instructions on this link.

To create a support ticket, please follow the steps below:

  1. Go to Appsheet help

  2. Scroll down to the bottom, you will find a box with the following text

    Need more help?

    Try these next steps:

    Contact us
    Tell us more and we’ll help you get there

  3. At this point you will be redirected to a three steps process in which users will possibly find answers to the query they have. Click Next

  4. Click Next Step

  5. Specify your preferred language and either click on Chat or e-mail

5

This might be a possibility because we do have an automation using appsheet api to delete records that fits a criteria every day, but the previous and intended behaviour is to delete the whole row, not clear the values.

6

Apparently the rows aren’t empty at all. When I extracted the data using Appsheet API the supposed empty rows had data inside. However, for some reason when viewing the appsheet database (using the same account used for the appsheet api credentials), the rows are empty. Is this a security filter or something similar?

7

What was in them?