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How to use columns BY and OR in Google sheets query?

Currently I use Google Sheets as a database, which has more than 1000 columns from A to AGH. If the query contains column BY or column OR, the result will be null.

How can I avoid that column names cannot be mixed with query commands (by and or) ?

Solution

  • As written in official documentation:

    Identifiers (or IDs) are text strings that identify columns.

    Important: If your identifier

    Has spaces,
    Is a reserved word,
    Contains anything but alphanumeric characters or underscores ([a-zA-Z0-9_]), or
    Starts with a digit

    it must be surrounded by back-quotes (not single quotes).

    =QUERY(BY1:BY4,"SELECT `BY`",0)

    Alternatively, {} removes the range references and only puts the values, which can be referenced with Col numbers.

    =QUERY({BY1:BY4},"SELECT Col1",0)