The Datarails add-on turns Google Sheets into a live reporting surface for your Datarails data. You pull governed numbers into your cells, build reports on top of them, slice them with filters, and drill from any figure down to the records behind it, without leaving the spreadsheet.

Start with the Installation and Setup guide, then open the add-on from Extensions > Datarails. 

Everything happens in the panel on the right side of the Google Sheets window. Leave it open beside your sheet as you work, or close and reopen it whenever you like.

How the panel is organized

The panel has three parts, and they stay in the same place as you move between screens.

Header

Refresh

Refresh pulls the latest data from Datarails into your spreadsheet. Your numbers stay as they were until someone clicks Refresh, so you always know which figures you are looking at.

1. Click Refresh in the panel.
2. Every Datarails formula and table in the spreadsheet is recalculated against the current data.

Refresh at the start of a working session, and after a period closes or new data is loaded into Datarails. Changing a filter or the reference date refreshes the report for you, so there is nothing extra to click.

Refresh runs as you: it returns the data your Datarails account is entitled to see.

A refresh can take a moment on a large report. Leave the spreadsheet open until it finishes.

Refresh covers the whole spreadsheet. To refetch only part of it, select the range and use Refresh selection only, which is quicker in a large report.

Your account

The account icon shows who is signed in, which Datarails environment you are connected to, and the add-on version, which is useful when contacting Support. It is also where you log out.

Quick actions

Filters

Filters slice your report without rebuilding it, by entity, department, scenario, or any other dimension in your data. A filter applies across every table and formula that shares that field, so one selection updates the whole report consistently. Changing a selection refreshes the report.

See Filters.

Set date

Set date sets the reference date for your report. You choose a format, which sets whether you are picking a day, a month, a quarter or a year, then pick the period. Date-scoped functions resolve as of that date, so the same report can be taken through any period without editing a single formula.

The date is stored as the end of the period you chose, and saved in the spreadsheet rather than per person, so everyone who opens the file works on the same period.

Changing the date refreshes the report.

Home

Get data

Get data brings Datarails data into your cells. It asks how you would like to consume your data, and offers three routes:

Formulas. Data arrives through Datarails formulas, which combine a Datarails function with the conditions that narrow the result. Four ways to work with them:

Report builder. Generates a complete report rather than a single figure.

Data tables. Extracts the underlying data into the sheet as rows.

See Get Data.

Drill down

Drill down breaks an aggregated figure into the detail behind it. Select the cells you want to see the breakdown for, and open the records or a summary by a field such as department or vendor.

Drill-down results respect your own Datarails data access, so two people drilling into the same cell may see different levels of detail.

See Drill Down.

Sharing and working with other people

A Datarails report is an ordinary Google Sheets file. Share it from the Share button, exactly as you would any other, and several people can work in it at once, seeing each other's changes live.

Everyone who opens the file sees the numbers in it

Those values are visible whether or not the person has Datarails, and regardless of what they are entitled to see in Datarails. Datarails governs what each person can pull, not what is already written in a spreadsheet you hand them. Nothing breaks for a reader without the add-on either: the formulas hold their values and no error appears.

What differs is what people can do

Only the first group can refresh. For everyone else the report is a snapshot from the moment it was last refreshed, which is worth saying explicitly if the figures will be read weeks later.

Refreshed values, filters and the reference date belong to the file

None of them is personal to you. When a colleague refreshes or changes a filter, everyone gets the result of their choice on their next visit to the file.

Getting help

Contact the Datarails Support team at support@datarails.com, or reach out to your dedicated Customer Success Manager.

Updated September 28, 2026 11:20