eCommix gives you the data — you decide how to look at it. Every spreadsheet it creates is a regular Google Sheet, which means all of Google Sheets' built-in tools are at your disposal. This tutorial walks through the most useful ways to tailor your view to your own workflow.
1. Choose your style (or use none at all)
When you configure a spreadsheet, the Style step lets you choose between No Style and Styled.
Choose No Style if you want to apply your own colours, fonts, borders, or any formatting. Because eCommix only writes the data and never re-applies a style, your formatting is preserved across every refresh. This is the best choice when you have a specific look in mind or when you share the sheet with a team that has its own branding.
Choose Styled if you want eCommix to handle the formatting for you. A green header row and alternating grey rows are applied automatically after every sync. Keep in mind that any manual formatting you add will be removed when the style is reapplied.
2. Use chips for status and category fields
Google Sheets lets you convert any text cell into a visual chip — a coloured badge that makes categories and statuses much easier to scan at a glance. This works great for fields like Status (Product), Financial Status (Order), or Fulfillment Status (Order).
To add chips, select the cells you want to convert, go to Insert → Dropdown, and choose your values and colours. From that point on, the column shows coloured chips instead of plain text, and Google Sheets enforces the allowed values automatically.
Because eCommix writes only the cell values and never touches formatting or data validation rules, your chip configuration survives every sync refresh.
3. Hide columns you don't need
Some columns are useful to have in the sheet — like identifier fields — but you don't need to see them every day. Right-click any column header and choose Hide column. The column stays in the sheet and eCommix can still read and write it; it's just out of your way.
To reveal hidden columns again, look for the arrows that appear between the adjacent column headers and click them.
4. Freeze rows and columns
When your sheet has many rows or columns, it helps to keep the headers or a key identifier column always visible as you scroll. In Google Sheets, go to View → Freeze and choose how many rows or columns to lock in place.
Freezing row 1 keeps your column headers visible as you scroll down through hundreds of orders or products. Freezing the first column keeps a field like Title (Product) or Order Number in view as you scroll right through the rest of the data.
5. Add filters to focus on what matters
Google Sheets filters let you temporarily hide rows that don't match your criteria, without deleting any data. Click any header cell, then go to Data → Create a filter. A filter icon appears on every column; click it to choose which values to show or hide.
For example, you can filter an Orders sheet to show only unfulfilled orders, or a Products sheet to show only active products in a specific vendor. The filtered view is yours alone — if you use Filter views (Data → Filter views → Create new filter view) instead of a plain filter, each person on the sheet can have their own view without affecting anyone else.
6. Add empty columns for your own formulas
The Format Data step in eCommix lets you add empty columns alongside your Shopify data columns. An empty column has no Shopify field behind it — it's a blank slot in the sheet that eCommix leaves untouched on every sync.
Use these columns for anything you need to calculate yourself: profit margins next to cost and price columns, a running total, a VLOOKUP that pulls data from another sheet, or a conditional formula that flags rows needing attention. Because eCommix never writes to those cells, your formulas are safe across every refresh.
7. Insert product images
If your export includes an image URL column — such as Image Src (Product) — you can display the actual product images inside the cells rather than showing the raw URL text.
Select the cells that contain image URLs, then use the formula =IMAGE(cell) in an adjacent column, or use Insert → Image → Image in cell to embed images directly. Resize the row height to make the thumbnails visible at a comfortable size.
This is especially useful for product catalogues and inventory sheets where you want a visual reference alongside the data.
The goal: your data, your workflow
eCommix is designed to give you a clean, accurate snapshot of your Shopify store in Google Sheets and then get out of the way. The underlying data refreshes on your schedule, but the presentation — styles, chips, hidden columns, frozen panes, filters, formulas, and images — is entirely yours to set up once and keep forever.
