Being able to Send SMS messages from Google Sheets can be a powerful tool for businesses who run their business on Google sheets. SMS messages sent from Google Sheets can be used for reminders, internal notifications, confirmation texts, surveys, and more. And all while being able to leave your data where you want it – in Google Sheets.
In this article we’ll show you how to send SMS messages from a Google Sheet using Lido, a new tool focused on automating Google Spreadsheets. Currently, Lido requires the use of Twilio for sending text messages. Twilio is the most powerful and popular texting service in the world.
Skip this section and move on to “Connect Twilio Account to Lido” if you already have a Twilio account with a registered and verified phone number.
First, you need to create an account on the Twilio website.
You'll need to register a phone number to send texts from Twilio. We recommend registering a US Toll-Free number, as this provides the simplest and cheapest verification process.
Lido supports all phone number types provided by Twilio, such as US 10DLC numbers. As of January 24th, 2024, Twilio provides a free US Toll-Free number.
Due to industry-wide restrictions and regulations, it is now required to verify your Toll-Free number before it can be used for messaging.
This can be done by navigating to Phone Numbers > Manage > Active Numbers, and clicking the "Toll free verification required" badge.
Twilio's verification process can take up to 3 weeks. Without verification, you can still send messages to the Twilio virtual phone, however, as we will show later in this guide.
You can only send messages to up-to five verified phone numbers using a Twilio trial account after verification. An example of a verified number would be the phone number you used when creating your account. If you need to send messages to an unlimited number of unverified people you need to upgrade your account. You can do this by navigating to the project selection page and clicking the upgrade button.
Here's how to connect your Twilio account to Lido:
To send SMS messages from your Google Spreadsheet, we’ll be using Lido, a new tool built for spreadsheet automation that is fully compatible with Google Sheets. You can create a free account at https://www.lido.app/go/signup.
Create a new file. Lido is a new kind of spreadsheet that can pull in Google Sheets data in real time.
To send SMS text messages from Google Sheets, we’ll be using one of Lido’s action formulas =SENDSMS().
=SENDSMS(credential, from, to, body, [status_cell])
In any cell, start typing =SENDSMS.
When using the SENDSMS formula, you'll be asked for your Account SID and Auth Token, which can be found on the homepage of your Twilio account. If you do not have a Twilio account yet please follow the steps outlined in the above section.
Once your Twilio account is connected, simply specify your registered and verified Twilio number in the from field of the SENDSMS formula, and the phone number you would like to text into the field.
Send the text by choosing “Run Action” from the cell menu (or right-clicking and choosing “Run Action”).
Popular reasons to send SMS from Google Sheets are to send automated text reminders for customers, text notifications based on a cell value, text notifications when a new record is added to your Google Sheet, any KPIs you keep in a sheet, and more.
The following blog posts have instructions on how to do these things using email instead of text. To use SMS, just replace SENDGMAIL in the following instructions with SENDSMS and it will work.
Send a message when a new row is added to a Google Sheet
Send a message from Google Sheets based on a date in a spreadsheet
Send a message from Google Sheets based on a cell value
Let's review how we’ve learned to send SMS from Google Sheets.
1. We’ll send SMS alerts from Google Sheets by using Lido, a new tool focused on automating spreadsheets and compatible with Google Sheets.
2. To do so, we’ll use SENDSMS(), one of Lido’s action formulas that let you send SMS messages from a spreadsheet.
3. SENDSMS() currently only works with Twilio, so you’ll need to set up a Twilio account.
We hope this article has helped you and given you a good understanding of how to send an SMS from Google Sheets.
