Email-to-sheet automation demo

Three emails about one repair order → one tracker row live simulation

The hard part of an inbox-to-spreadsheet automation isn't reading the email — it's knowing when a new message is an update to an existing record instead of a new one. This is a working simulation of that exact merge logic: three separate, messily-worded emails about the same Repair Order, landing at different times from different people, folding into a single row instead of three duplicate rows.

Inbox

RE: Update on RO1234567

From: sarah.ops@partsdesk.example · today, 08:12

Hi team, just to confirm — repair on RO1234567 (fuel pump assy, part# FP-2291) has started. Estimated value on this one is around $340. Will keep you posted.

Invoice attached — RO1234567

From: billing@partsdesk.example · today, 14:47

Repair complete on RO1234567. Invoice INV-88231 for $340.00 attached. Let us know once payment is scheduled.

Payment sent

From: accounts@ourcompany.example · tomorrow, 09:03

Paid INV-88231 (RO 1234567) today, $340.00 — settled via bank transfer. Closing this one out.

Google Sheet — Repair Orders tracker

RO Number	Part	Status	Amount	Sent By
—	—	—	—	—

Click through all three — the sheet stays at one row for RO1234567 the whole time. Each new email is matched to the row by RO number, existing fields are never wiped by a partial update, and the "Sent By" column accumulates every sender rather than overwriting the last one. This is the identify-the-record / merge-don't-duplicate pattern an Outlook-to-Sheets repair-order tracker needs — built here as a plain client-side simulation, the real version runs the same matching logic against the Microsoft Graph API and the Google Sheets API on a daily schedule.