How often does the sheet update?

IMPORTDATA re-pulls about once an hour. You can't set the exact time, but that's plenty — your pains update at most once a day.

Is the key in the formula safe?

The key only reaches the one project you tied it to — never the rest of your account. Anyone you share the sheet with can see it, so keep the key scoped to a single project. If it leaks, cancel it in Settings → API keys and paste in a new one.

Why is one commenter's pain showing as a whole theme?

Each row is one theme, and post_count tells you how many Reddit posts back it. A count of 1 means a single commenter raised it; sort by post_count to see the themes the most people share.

Track your Reddit buyer pains in a Google Sheet

Get every buyer-pain theme dist0 finds into a Google Sheet that fills and refreshes itself — one formula, no code, no Google API key.

Last updated July 7, 2026

On this page

What lands in the sheet
Step 1 — Make a dist0 API key
Step 2 — Paste one formula
It refreshes itself

Get every buyer-pain theme dist0 finds into a Google Sheet — one formula fills it and keeps it up to date. No code, no Google API key. From there it's a normal spreadsheet you can sort, filter, and share.

What lands in the sheet

dist0 groups the Reddit posts it reads into buyer-pain themes — one theme per recurring problem, backed by the real posts where people described it. The sheet gets one row per theme, with these exact column headers:

Column	What it holds
`theme_id`	A stable id for the theme, handy if you link sheets together.
`title`	The name of the buyer pain.
`summary`	A one-line description of the pain.
`post_count`	How many Reddit posts back the theme.
`first_seen` / `last_seen`	The date range the posts span.
`top_source_links`	Links to the most recent source posts.

New pains keep landing as dist0 reads more of Reddit, and the sheet's themes grow with them.

Step 1 — Make a dist0 API key

The formula needs a dist0 API key to read your project's pains. Make one in Settings — name it Google Sheets and tie it to a single project.

Step 2 — Paste one formula

Open a Google Sheet, click an empty cell, and paste this — swapping in the key you just copied:

=IMPORTDATA("https://dist0.com/api/v1/export/sov?view=summary&token=YOUR_KEY")

Press Enter. The sheet fills with every buyer-pain theme, one per row, headers and all. From here it's a normal spreadsheet — sort by post_count to see the most-mentioned pains first, filter by date, or share it with your team.

That's the whole setup. The view=summary part keeps it to one row per theme, which stays well under Google Sheets' import size limit.

It refreshes itself

You don't have to touch the sheet again. Google Sheets re-runs IMPORTDATA about once an hour, and each run replaces the data with the latest pull — so new pains show up on their own and nothing is ever duplicated.

FAQ

How often does the sheet update?
IMPORTDATA re-pulls about once an hour. You can't set the exact time, but that's plenty — your pains update at most once a day.
Is the key in the formula safe?
The key only reaches the one project you tied it to — never the rest of your account. Anyone you share the sheet with can see it, so keep the key scoped to a single project. If it leaks, cancel it in Settings → API keys and paste in a new one.
Why is one commenter's pain showing as a whole theme?
Each row is one theme, and post_count tells you how many Reddit posts back it. A count of 1 means a single commenter raised it; sort by post_count to see the themes the most people share.