How to get a random row from Google Sheets with Zapier - Post random blog posts, quotes and more

Learn how to get a random row from Google Sheets with Zapier. You can use this to post random blog posts to social media (like a poor man's MeetEdgar), post random motivational quotes to you or your team and lots more.
It's a great Zapier skill to learn.
Learn how to save 100+ hours per month even if you've never used Zapier before in my course at jimmyrose.me/zapier-mastery/
Chapters
0:00 How to get a random row from Google Sheets
1:20 Google Sheet example to post random blog posts
1:37 Creating zaps
2:00 Creating a schedule trigger
3:00 Google sheet setup - new columns
5:00 Using ArrayFormula to auto populate the new columns
7:00 Looking up a random row in Zapier
1. Get the last row
2. Generate a random number between 2 & the last row number
3. Lookup the row
Formulae for Row Number & Has Value. Add these into the 2nd row and customize the column letters as needed
Row Number
=ARRAYFORMULA(if(ISBLANK(B2:B),"",ROW(B2:B)))
Has Value
=ArrayFormula(if(ISBLANK(B2:B),"",TRUE))
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[@_jimmyrose]

Learn how to save 100+ hours per month even if you've never used Zapier before in my course at jimmyrose.me/zapier-mastery/

[@vokinburt]

What an interesting technique. I would have never thought to use randomization in Google Sheets for such practical tasks.

[@_jimmyrose]

Thanks Adam. Over the years I've found a few use cases for it!

[@espeeon]

great video i implemented it straight away to repurpose content on my social channels. always great content buddy

[@_jimmyrose]

That's bloody awesome to hear. Thanks mate

[@reshmakalidass6780]

Thank You🙏

[@mrpickerpoc]

Love it, liked and subed

[@_jimmyrose]

Thank you!

[@mubashirshah82]

Hi Jimmy, that's a great video!
Could please tell if we can get a code from random row in google sheet and then automatically delete it so that code can't be used again ?

[@alexandermchendrie4256]

This is brilliant

[@_jimmyrose]

Thank you!

[@alexandermchendrie4256]

Do you know if its possible to generate words from a list.
For example everytime zapier sends a post to buffer it can be the same but different.
Hey lovely people have a great day
Hi everyone have a great week

[@_jimmyrose]

@@alexandermchendrie4256 yeah you would just have each of those options as a row in the sheet. You can also check out the Zapier Formatter utility "pick from list"
This does the same thing right inside Zapier and is good for short lists

[@UkulelePH-kg2iv]

Fantastic video! But how do I make sure that one a row has been picked, that it won't be picked again in the future? Is there a way to delete a row after it has been picked?

[@_jimmyrose]

Thank you.
Yes there is a delete row action in Zapier

[@stay.in.heaven]

When i try to send the tweet, i get an error saying " 'int' object has no attribute 'isnumeric' " can you help me fix it please?

[@_jimmyrose]

I have never seen that before. I'm guessing one of the fields you're sending to the action is the wrong one

[@simranjeetsingh2629]

Hi jimmy in the random number section where you have put rendbetween formula there in the bracket do we have to choose the row number manually means if i update my sheet data in future i also have to update this randbetween formula to catch the new rows?its urgent

[@_jimmyrose]

The step before that looks up the last row number. That means if you add a new row it will automatically update and find the new last row

[@simranjeetsingh2629]

@@_jimmyrose i think i have a problem in second step( get the last row). It is not updating the last row when i update data in the sheet but when i do retest and review in second step manually then it is updating the row. means i have to do retest and review everytime i update sheet. can you guess why is this problem coming from second step

[@simranjeetsingh2629]

and thanks for the quick reply your video helped me a lot

[@_jimmyrose]

@@simranjeetsingh2629 no worries at all. Glad it helped.
I'm not sure about it not updating though. I would have to do some testing or a consult with you too see what's happening.
Sometimes I've found if a sheet won't update, you can add a step to just update any cell in your sheet and it forces an update

[@simranjeetsingh2629]

@@_jimmyrose ok thanks for the help

[@KevinLowell]

What if I don't want it to be random? What if I want it to go from the top to the bottom?

[@_jimmyrose]

You could use a formula in another sheet that calculates the next row based on the one that was just read.
The zap would check the row number first, get that row, then update the row number that was just read
You could also use "Storage by Zapier" to store the last row number

[@JaredCWS]

@@_jimmyrose Any chance you could show how to do this?

[@jamesrose86]

@@JaredCWS Taking a break from videos at the moment. But I reckon the easiest way to do this is Storage by Zapier. Create a variable called "Last Row Number". Zap looks like
Step 1 - whatever trigger
Step 2 - Storage - get last row number
Step 3 - Sheets - get row from number
Step 4 - Storage - set last row number to what it was in step 2, +1

[@JaredCWS]

@@jamesrose86 I understand. Thanks for the response! It'll get me on the path.

[@JaredCWS]

@@jamesrose86 Unfortunately it didn't work and even ChatGPT got me stuck in an "output fields" step. Thanks for the attempt.