Getting started

SQL Cell puts a SQL editor in a Google Sheets sidebar. The queries run in your browser — the data does not go to a server — and the results land in the sheet when you say so, not before.

This walkthrough takes about five minutes and covers the whole loop: run a query, look at what came back, put it in the sheet, and find it again tomorrow.

1. Install the add-on

Install SQL Cell from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Google will ask you to approve two permissions:

• See, edit, create and delete your spreadsheets — SQL Cell writes query results into the sheet you have open, and reads the cell you have selected to know where to put them.
• Display and run third-party web content — this is what lets the sidebar exist at all.

2. Open the sidebar

Open any spreadsheet, then choose Extensions → SQL Cell → Open SQL Cell.

The sidebar has three parts, top to bottom:

Query	The SQL editor. Always on screen.
Files	Files you have attached, and the exact name to use for each one.
History	Every result you have inserted into this workbook, with the query that produced it.

Files and History are collapsible, and both can be open while you type. That is deliberate: you will usually be looking at a filename while writing the query that reads it.

3. Run the query that is already there

The editor opens with a working example — a small Parquet file read straight off the web. Press Run query, or Ctrl / Cmd + Enter.

The first run of a session takes a few seconds longer than the rest. SQL Cell downloads its query engine (DuckDB, compiled to WebAssembly) the first time you use it, and the sidebar tells you that is what it is doing.

4. Look at the result before it touches your sheet

Running a query does not write anything. Instead the sidebar shows you what came back:

• The shape — 3 rows × 4 columns — and how long the query took.
• A Columns tab: one row per column, with its type, the spread of its values, and how many are empty. This is the fastest way to notice that a column you expected to be a number arrived as text.
• A Rows tab: the first 100 rows, scrollable sideways.

At the bottom is the destination — something like Sheet1!A1:D4. That is where Insert would put the block, based on the cell you have selected.

5. Choose where it goes, then insert

Click any cell in your sheet to move the destination, then press the refresh arrow next to it in the sidebar. The sheet stays clickable the whole time the preview is open — that is why the preview is a sidebar panel rather than a dialog.

When the destination looks right, press Insert. Press Discard if it does not — nothing has been written yet either way.

If the target area already has something in it, SQL Cell says so and asks before overwriting rather than doing it quietly.

6. Query your own file

Remote files are convenient for a demo, but the point of SQL Cell is your data.

1. Open Files and press Add files. Pick a CSV, TSV, Parquet, JSON, JSONL or XLSX file.
2. The file appears in the list with the exact text you use to refer to it, shown underneath its name — for sales.csv, that is 'sales.csv', in single quotes.
3. Click the file to drop that reference into the editor wherever your cursor is. Or press Query this to replace the editor contents with a query that already works:

SELECT * FROM 'sales.csv' LIMIT 100;

From there it is ordinary SQL. Files are referenced by name, so joining two of them is what you would expect:

SELECT c.region, sum(o.total) AS revenue
FROM 'orders.csv' o
JOIN 'customers.csv' c ON o.customer_id = c.id
GROUP BY c.region
ORDER BY revenue DESC;

Attached files do not persist

Your files are held in the browser tab, not uploaded anywhere. That is good for privacy and it means closing the sidebar detaches them. Reopen SQL Cell later and you will need to add the files again before a query that reads them will run. SQL Cell will tell you when that has happened — see step 7.

7. Come back to a query later

Every result you insert is saved into the workbook itself, as a named range whose header cell carries the query that produced it. The sheet looks unchanged, but the query travels with the file — send the spreadsheet to a colleague and your queries go with it.

Open History and each entry gives you:

• ↗ — jump to the block in the sheet.
• Load into editor — put the query back in the editor to run or edit.

If a saved query reads a file you have not attached in this session, the entry says so before you run it, and offers Re-attach… to open the file picker. This is the one thing that surprises returning users, so SQL Cell raises it rather than letting the query fail with an unhelpful error.

What next

• Sheets add-on features — what the add-on can and cannot do.
• SQL basics — if SELECT and GROUP BY are new to you.
• Troubleshooting — when something does not work.