A Google Sheet is the easiest data source to start with in Templater, and it is the one most teams stay with longer than they should. Each row holds the content for one video, each column feeds one layer, and anyone with the link can fix a typo without opening After Effects.
This is the reference we would want on the desk next to us. It covers how the connection behaves, how to lay out a sheet so it does not bite you later, what happens when you run a batch from it, which errors come up, and the point at which a spreadsheet stops being the right container. We keep it to what Templater actually does. Where something is general practice rather than a documented behavior, we say so.
How Templater uses a Google Sheet
Templater is an After Effects plugin that pairs a rigged composition with a data source. Google Sheets is one of the data sources it supports directly, alongside tab-separated value files exported from Excel, Numbers, or Sheets, and JSON files or feeds. You connect your project to a sheet in the Templater panel, map the columns to the composition’s layers, and Templater reads the rows.
Every edition can do this, including Rig. That detail surprises people. Templater Rig, the entry edition, offers full integration with Google Sheets, so you can preview your versioning data directly inside After Effects without importing or retyping anything. Rig cannot batch output, but it can render individual jobs using After Effects’ built-in render options, and it is a practical way to check a data set before a Pro or Bot machine runs the whole thing. Pro and Bot add the batch functions on top.
What a sheet can hold
Text is the obvious case. Names, headlines, prices written as words, descriptions. Templater reads text as it appears in the sheet, so commas, quotes, apostrophes, and new lines are accepted. You can put characters from any language into the sheet and see them in your text layers, provided your installed fonts have the glyphs. Right-to-left scripts are supported.
Beyond text, a sheet can hold references. Footage sources for dynamic layers can be local or cloud-based, so a column can point at a file or a link, and our post on Smart URL Processing covers pulling in remote footage. A column can also carry a custom output file name for each render job or replicated composition, and a column can select which After Effects template each row should use when two or more template files share the same data.
There is one more trick. Templater can use Google Sheets to populate cells with data from Google’s translation service, from social network feeds, and from other external APIs. The sheet becomes a staging area. Data comes in from somewhere else, gets cleaned up, and Templater consumes it.
Why teams like it
Collaboration is the real reason. Multiple people can contribute to the same sheet, and the videos draw on whatever the sheet says when the job runs. A copywriter owns the headline column. A product manager owns the price column. The designer does not need to be involved at all. In a studio where designers use Rig to build templates, the same sheet is shared for previewing and testing, so the team agrees on the data before anyone renders a frame.
Laying out a sheet that holds up
The rest of this section is general practice, not documented behavior, apart from the places where we name a feature. Sheets are forgiving, which is exactly why they get messy.
One tab, one row per video
Templater can map data to a single worksheet. It cannot read several tabs at once, and more generally it pulls from one data source per project. So the tab you connect has to carry everything the template needs. If your information is spread across a product tab, a price tab, and an image tab, build a combined tab, and let that tab do the joining.
Put one video on one row. It is the simplest model to reason about and the one that matches how Templater processes jobs. If a video needs ten text fields, give the tab ten columns for them. Resist the urge to pack several values into one cell and split them later.
Column names that mean something
Give every column a header that says what it feeds. “headline” and “photo_path” will be understood by the next person. “col_7” will not. The headers also become the vocabulary you use when you map the data to layers, so a clear name pays off every time you open the project.
Know the reserved names. Templater Bot reads a render-status column to decide whether to render a given data set, and if you set a Bot Name in Templater’s preferences, Bot looks for a column headed “bot” in the sheet. Our documentation lists the full set of reserved column names, so check it before you name a column something that Templater would treat as an instruction. We also have a post on flags in data sources if you want to see how control columns are used.
Design for the longest and the emptiest row
Fill the sheet with real rows before you decide the template works. Include the longest name you have, a row with an accented character, a row with a missing photo link. Use Templater’s preview to step through the jobs and see how text, footage, and colors behave. If you build the template with layout rules, Templater adjusts dynamic layers relative to their containing composition and sibling layers, and our layout rules post explains how to describe those relationships once.
Keep a clean separation between data and instructions
A sheet tends to collect notes. A comment in column K, a cell highlighted yellow, a row somebody wanted to skip. Highlighting does nothing for Templater. If a row should be skipped, say so in a column the process reads, such as the render-status column that Bot uses, rather than relying on color or memory.
If you are coming from Excel
Templater does not read an Excel file directly. Export the data to a tab-delimited file, and use that as the data source. If your team can move the file into Google Sheets, you gain the shared editing and the cloud connection, and you stop shipping files back and forth.
Running a batch from the sheet
A worked example: a weekly roster sheet
Picture a sports club’s media person who makes a player card for every athlete on the roster each week. The sheet has one row per player. Columns hold the player’s name, position, a short stat line, a path to a headshot, a path to a highlight clip, and a column for output file name so each finished card arrives already labeled. One column is the render status.
On Monday, the stats coordinator updates the stat line column. The designer does nothing, because the template is already rigged. The media person opens the project, previews the first row, then the player with the longest surname, then the one whose headshot is missing, and fixes the missing path in the sheet. Then she runs the batch on a Pro machine. If the club later wants cards to appear within minutes of a stat update, she moves the same sheet and the same template to a Bot machine and changes nothing else about the design.
That is the whole value of the arrangement. The template never changes. The sheet changes every week, and the person who knows the facts is the person who edits them.
Who owns the sheet
This is general practice and it matters more than any setting. Pick one person who is responsible for the structure of the sheet, meaning the tab, the headers, and the status column. Everyone else edits values and nothing else. When two people each add a column “just for me,” the mapping in After Effects breaks on the next run, and nobody knows why. If your team is large, protect the header row and the status column using the sharing controls Google gives you. A sheet that has an owner is a data source. A sheet without one is a shared whiteboard.
Preview, spot check, then run
Preview the first row. Then preview the worst row. In Pro and Bot you can go further and generate spot checks, which are stills or short clips of specific frames from the data-merged compositions, so you can check how data lands across many jobs. You pick the frames with named composition timeline markers, or Templater samples frames at even intervals. Our post on spot checks covers the setup.
Render or Replicate
Once the data looks right, Pro renders each row. Replicate saves a copy of the project with the data inserted, which you can then send to the After Effects render queue or Adobe Media Encoder for output formats After Effects does not provide. The batch rendering post explains when to choose which.
Letting Bot watch the sheet
With Bot, the sheet becomes an inbox. Bot checks the data source periodically, and when it finds rows ready to go, it triggers customization and rendering. That is how teams get videos on demand without anyone pressing Render. It also makes the sheet the control surface, which is the reason to be strict about the render-status column and about who may edit it.
If you run several Bots in parallel to divide a large batch, the data source needs its own configuration so the machines do not collide. Our documentation has a guide for setting up a data source for multiple Bots. Two machines roughly halve the production time, and three cut it to a third.
Writing results back
Data does not have to flow only one way. A script hooked into a Templater event can return the URL of an uploaded video to the data source, so a marketer can embed the correct URL in an email campaign. Projector goes a step further. It reads from Google Sheets, renders several videos at once, delivers them to supported platforms, and can retrieve metadata from the streaming platform and write it back to your data source. If your email or SMS tool reads the same sheet, that closes the loop without a copy and paste.
Keep Templater current
We have published a post titled Required Templater Update For All Google Sheets Users. If a sheet connection that used to work has stopped, read that post and check you are on a current version of Templater. For the step-by-step version of a first project, there is also our walkthrough on automating video editing with Google Sheets.
When errors appear
Two messages come up often. The first is an error with code 3 when Bot requests information from Google, reported as a ScriptError. It means a value that Bot needs cannot be found in the data source. The most common cause is a missing render-status column. It can also happen when a Bot Name is set in preferences but no column with the header “bot” exists. Add the column and try again.
The second is “Failed at N/A” on After Effects render queue items. That tells you After Effects could not find an asset, footage file, or font where the project expected it. Files that were moved or deleted are the usual cause. Saving asset references inside the project and keeping footage in a stable location avoids it.
Where a sheet stops being enough
A sheet is a good container up to a point, and then it is not. Our QUE page says it plainly: spreadsheets become unwieldy as the volume and complexity of your production grows. QUE is JSON-based and cloud-based, it uses API endpoints that can receive data from anywhere, and you do not need to know JSON to use it, because you can enter information in the QUE Dash. QUE also offers a dashboard to monitor job status and the utilization of rendering machines.
You do not have to choose between them. You can use Google Sheets and QUE together. Set QUE as the Templater data source, then bring the sheet in either directly through the QUE API or through QUE’s built-in Zapier integration. That suits teams who want people to keep working in the sheet they know while the production system runs on QUE.
If the sheet is becoming a program, with formulas feeding formulas and scripts nobody remembers writing, consider moving that logic out of the sheet. A JSON feed from your own app is easier to test, and it does not break when someone inserts a column.
The limits, in one list
- One worksheet per mapping. Templater cannot connect to multiple tabs of a Google Sheet at once, or to more than one data source.
- No mixed styling within a text layer. One layer takes one font, size, weight, and style, and the data cannot mark up a single word in bold. Separate text layers positioned next to each other are a partial workaround.
- No direct Excel reading. Export to a tab-delimited file.
- Rig cannot batch. It can preview and render single jobs.
- Large teams and large volumes strain a spreadsheet. Plan the move to QUE or JSON before the sheet becomes a daily source of trouble.
The bottom line
Use Google Sheets when your data is modest, several people edit it, and you want to see changes quickly. Keep one tab, one row per video, clear headers, and a status column that Bot respects. Preview your worst row before you run a batch. When the sheet starts to feel like software, move the data to QUE or a JSON feed and keep the sheet as an editing surface. Our Templater page has the free 30-day trial, which includes everything, so you can test your own sheet end to end.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are the questions that come up most when people connect a sheet for the first time.
Can Templater connect to more than one tab in a Google Sheet?
No. Templater maps data to a single worksheet, and more generally it pulls from a single data source, whether that is a Google Sheet, a JSON file, a tab-delimited file, or another supported format. If your information is spread across tabs, build a combined tab that holds everything the template needs and connect to that one.
Does Templater Rig work with Google Sheets?
Yes. Rig, Pro, and Bot all offer full integration with Google Sheets. Rig lets you preview versioning data directly in After Effects and render individual jobs with After Effects’ own render options. It cannot batch output, so for a full run across many rows you need Pro or Bot.
Why does Templater Bot show error code 3 when it reads my sheet?
The error means a value Bot needs cannot be found in the data source. The most common cause is that the sheet has no render-status column, which Bot reads to decide whether to render a given row. It can also appear when a Bot Name is set in Templater’s preferences but no column headed “bot” exists in the sheet. Add the missing column and run again.
Can I use Google Sheets and QUE together?
Yes. Set QUE as the Templater data source, then connect the Google Sheet to QUE either directly through the QUE API or through QUE’s built-in integration with Zapier. This lets people keep editing in a sheet while QUE handles the job management, API access, and dashboard.
Can I read data from an Excel file instead?
Not directly. Export the Excel data to a tab-delimited file and use that as your data source. Templater accepts tab-separated value files exported from Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets. If several people need to edit the data, moving it into a Google Sheet gives you shared editing with the same cloud connection.
Can Templater write information back to my sheet?
Yes, through scripts and through Projector. A script hooked into a Templater event can return a video’s URL to the data source after upload. Projector retrieves metadata from the streaming platform and writes it back to your data source, which email and SMS campaigns can then use.
