Kayabyte Sheet Guard

Your spreadsheet’s safety net for Google Sheets™: an audit log of who changed which cell, a backup of every Google Forms™ response with a check for responses that never arrived, and row rules that move, copy or timestamp rows.

Get started

1. Open a spreadsheet and choose Extensions › Kayabyte Sheet Guard › Open.
2. On the Guard tab, click Turn Sheet Guard on. It runs in your name from now on, for every editor of the file. Other editors do not need the add-on.
3. Edit a few cells, paste a block or delete a row, then open the Sheet Guard log tab, or search the log on the sidebar’s Log tab.
4. On the Rules tab, click Add an example to try a row rule: set a Status to Done and watch the row move.

Only the person who turned Sheet Guard on can change its settings. Others see them read-only, with that person’s name.

Audit log

Each manual edit in the tabs you choose becomes a row in the Sheet Guard log tab: time, who, tab, cell, what kind of change, the old value and the new value. Sheet Guard also records:

• pasted ranges and fills, cell by cell, with their old values;
• deleted rows, with what was in them;
• rows and columns inserted or removed, sorts, and tabs added, renamed or deleted.

To know old values for pastes and deleted rows, Sheet Guard keeps a hidden copy of each watched tab’s values (tabs named _kbsg_ followed by a number). Tabs larger than 50,000 cells are logged with new values only. Turning Sheet Guard off deletes these copies.

What the log cannot do:

• Changes made by formulas, scripts, other add-ons or the API are not logged. Google does not report them to add-ons.
• Google shows other editors’ email addresses only within the same Google Workspace™ organisation. Elsewhere the log says “Another editor (Google hides the name)”.
• The log lives in your spreadsheet. Its tab is protected so that only the person who turned Sheet Guard on (and the file owner) can edit it. Every row is numbered and signed with a key kept in that person’s Google account, so Check log integrity (Pro) finds rows that were changed, removed or added by hand later.

Sheet Guard helps you keep a record of changes. It is not a certified compliance or records-management system.

Form response guard

For each Google Form linked to the spreadsheet:

1. Each response is copied to the Sheet Guard form backup tab as it arrives, independently of the response tab. Rules that move responses elsewhere do not count as “missing”.
2. A check (daily on Free, hourly on Pro, or Check forms now) asks Google Forms™ for its responses, read-only, and compares them with the backup. It also warns when a form was unlinked, its response tab was renamed or deleted, a new “Form Responses 2” tab took over, or the header row was edited.
3. On Pro, responses that never reached the sheet are recovered into the backup tab, labelled with the form’s question titles, and the person who turned Sheet Guard on gets an email (at most one a day per spreadsheet). The email describes the problem and links to the spreadsheet; it never contains response content.

Recovery depends on the Google Forms™ API and on that person having access to the form.

Row rules

A rule says: when a row in a tab has a column that is, is not, contains, is checked, is not empty, or on any edit in the row, then:

• Move the row to another tab (created with the same header row if needed);
• Copy the row to another tab, once, when the condition becomes true;
• Stamp the date and time in a column, every time or only once (for a “Created” column).

Rules run when someone edits a row by hand, when a new form response arrives, or both. They work inside the same spreadsheet. Values and formats are copied, not formulas, so relative formulas never break.

Plans

	Free	Pro
Audit log	1 tab, last 1,000 changes	Every tab, up to 100,000 changes
Row rules	2	50
Form guard	1 form, daily check, problems shown in the sidebar	Every linked form, hourly check, recovery, email alerts
Log integrity check		✓
Price	Free	$6 per user per month, or $60 per user per year, with a 14-day free trial. Whole Google Workspace™ domain: $490 per year.

Prices include VAT or sales tax where it applies. Only the person who turns Sheet Guard on needs Pro. The domain plan covers up to 1,000 accounts with an email address on your domain; for larger organisations, invoices or quotes, email support@kayabyte.dev.

A plan change never deletes data. After a downgrade the log keeps its current size and stops growing past it; extra tabs, rules and forms are paused. If our licence service cannot be reached, the last confirmed plan keeps working.

Permissions

Scope	Why
spreadsheets.currentonly	Read edits, write the log, the snapshots and the form backup, and run your rules, in the spreadsheet where you use the add-on. No other file is opened.
script.container.ui	Show the sidebar and menu.
script.scriptapp	Create the four triggers (on edit, on change, on form submit, hourly) when you turn Sheet Guard on, and delete them when you turn it off.
script.send_mail	Pro: email problem alerts to you, the person who turned Sheet Guard on. Nobody else.
forms.responses.readonly	Read the responses of forms linked to the spreadsheet to find and recover missing ones. Forms are never changed.
forms.body.readonly	Read the form’s question titles to label recovered answers.
script.external_request, userinfo.email	Call the Google Forms™ API and check your plan with our licence service. Only your email address is sent to us.

Everything runs inside Google Apps Script™ in your account and stays in your spreadsheet. Cell values, the log and form responses are never sent to Kayabyte. See the privacy policy and terms of service.

Turning off and removing data

• Turn off (Guard tab) stops logging, form checks and rules and deletes the hidden snapshot tabs. The log and backup tabs stay.
• Remove Sheet Guard data (Plan tab) also deletes the settings and, if you tick them, the log and backup tabs.
• In a copy of the spreadsheet Sheet Guard starts switched off.

Support

support@kayabyte.dev, usually within one business day.

Google Sheets™, Google Forms™, Google Workspace™ and Google Apps Script™ are trademarks of Google LLC. Kayabyte is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google LLC.