Google Spreadsheets Adds Import Functions, Auto-Fill
Google Spreadsheets Adds Import Functions, Auto-Fill Google Spreadsheets just got a bit more powerful. There are four new cell functions to automatically import external data: importXml, importData, importHtml and googleReader.
For instance, importXML has two parameters, URL and an XPath query. Entering =importXML("http://waxy.org/links/", "//a/@href”) into a Google Spreadsheets cell and hitting return will load all links from the Waxy.org link blog in the subsequent cells. (I’m not sure if this data is automatically updated or if it’s a one-time fill, though it seems to be auto-updating.) A similar feature had been around in online spreadsheets competitor EditGrid, and so far set EditGrid apart from Spreadsheets in that regard.
