Fixing Formatting for Google Sheets

Sometimes, customers download Report Toaster reports to CSV with the intention of uploading them to Google Sheets.

This guide will help you troubleshoot some common formatting issues when importing this data. 

Start from a Blank Spreadsheet and Import the File

Typically this is the best place to start to ensure your data gets imported as cleanly as possible. 

So when you go to Google Sheets, choose Blank speadsheet as the first option:

After that, you'll want to go to File, Import, and choose your downloaded CSV file: 

Once that happens, you might see a popup like this: 

Be sure to check that box, as often Google Sheets will automatically be able to format some of the fields for you

If you're experiencing issues after that however, then see below for how to automatically fix certain fields

Converting Dates to a Regional Format

By default, your Google Sheets might choose a date format different from what you're wanting for the document 

For example, the date might be listed in mm/dd/yyyy format, but you want to change it to dd/mm/yyyy

Thankfully, this is easy to solve. Simply choose the column in question, then go to Format, Number, and choose Custom date and time: 

From here, you can choose a different date/time format from the list. 

If one isn't available that you would like, you can simply create your own! 

Click each section at the top - e.g. Day (5) / Month (8) / Year (30) and delete them.

You can then add them back in whatever order you choose. Don't forget to type a '/' in between each one or it won't work!

See below for an example using Day / Month / Year: 

Changing Column Alignment

Sometimes when data is imported, certain cells can be aligned to both the left and right hand sides of the cell: 

To fix this, click the column header at the top to select the whole column
Then click the alignment button and choose the correct value (usually left) - notice the whole column aligns left properly:  

Fixing Fields with Too Many Decimal Places

Due to the way data is rounded, sometimes values in the system come out like this 

This is because while the column in Report Toaster may know to round to 2 decimal places, the exported CSV file does not. 

Again though, this is an easy fix.

Select the column header to highlight the whole column and then click this button to decrease to the desired number of decimal places (typically 2 or 0)

Fixing Formatting (Number, Date, Percentage) 

Sometimes after importing a field, Google Sheets thinks a value is a date when it's really a number (or thinks its a number when it's really a percentage). 

Usually this gets resolved if you check the box when importing the file (above)

But if you still see something odd and need to correct manually, you can do so by selecting the whole column (via clicking the header), go to Format, and choose the applicable option.

E.g. here  we want something to display as a percentage, so we chose Format, Number, Percent

We can then adjust decimal places if desired by following the process above. 

For more information about using Report Toaster, check out our FAQ or reach out to us at any time :)

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