Expiry Reminders Help

Setup guide, demo video, answers to common questions, and a free assistant for the Expiry Reminders Google Sheets add-on.

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Hi! Ask me anything about the Expiry Reminders add-on: setup, reminders, renewals, plans or Telegram / Slack / Discord.

See how it works

Get started

  1. Install Expiry Reminders from the Google Workspace Marketplace, open any Google Sheet, then choose Extensions > Expiry Reminders > Open.
  2. Press "Set up reminders" in the sidebar (or Extensions > Expiry Reminders > Settings). Under "1. Your dates", pick the tab that holds your dates and choose its "Item name" and "Expiry date" columns (they are guessed from the header text). No list yet? Press "Create a new Expiry Tracker tab" and replace the example row with your items.
  3. Under "2. Reminders", choose who gets the emails ("Send reminders to", blank = your own address), when ("Before expiry", default 60, 30, 14 and 7 days before and on the day; or "Custom days…"), what happens after expiry ("Remind every week", "Remind every day" or "Stop reminding") and the hour ("Send around").
  4. Under "3. Preview and turn on", leave the box ticked to confirm the recipients and press "Turn on reminders" ("Preview email" is optional and shows what the email will look like). A test email is sent right away. From then on Google checks the sheet once a day around the hour you chose, even when the file is closed, and all items due that day arrive in one email.

Columns, tabs and the optional extras

  1. Only "Item name" and "Expiry date" are required. Owner is shown in every reminder. Renewal term (e.g. "1 year") is used by Renew in the sidebar. Notes are shown under the item in the reminder email (not sent to Telegram, Slack or Discord). Recipient email: that address also gets its own email listing only its own items.
  2. Columns are saved by their header text, so inserting or moving columns is fine. If you rename a header, choose the column again in Settings.
  3. Press "Add another tab" to send reminders from several tabs; each tab has its own columns, and the email shows which tab each item comes from.
  4. Tick "Add "Days Left" and "Status" columns to the tabs" to add two formula columns at the right of your data. Untick it and save to remove them.
  5. "Message at the top of each email (optional)" puts your own text (up to 1,000 characters) under the title of every reminder email.
  6. Once reminders are on, press "Save changes" after changing settings. "Preview email" shows what the next email will look like.

Renew an item

  1. Open the sidebar (Extensions > Expiry Reminders > Open). "Due soon" lists items that expire in the next 60 days or have already expired.
  2. Press Renew, pick the term (1 month to 10 years; the item's Renewal term is selected for you), then Confirm. The expiry date moves forward and reminders start over for the new date.
  3. You can also just type the new expiry date in the sheet.

Get reminders on Telegram, Slack or Discord

  1. Turn on reminders first. Then open the sidebar and click "Also get reminders on Telegram, Slack or Discord". You are signed in to doyouok.com with the same Google account, with no separate sign-up.
  2. On the Notifications page, connect Telegram, Slack or Discord. From the next daily run, the items due that day are also sent there.
  3. Doyouok also watches the daily run: if the sheet stops checking in or a run fails, you get an alert by email (and on any channel you connected).

Frequently asked questions

Yes. The Free plan includes every feature and up to 100 reminded items a year. An item counts once a year however many reminders it gets, and tabs and spreadsheets are unlimited. Items that are already expired or expire within 31 days when you turn reminders on are reminded but not counted. Bigger plans (600 or 5,000 items a year) are on the pricing page at doyouok.com/home/pricing.

For now nothing is blocked: every reminder still goes out. The reminder email and the sidebar show a note with how many items were reminded this year and an Upgrade link. This is temporary: in future, reminders for items over the limit will stop until you upgrade or the next calendar year begins.

Check your spam and Promotions folders. Reminders are sent from your own Google account with the sender name "Expiry Reminders", to the addresses in "Send reminders to" (blank = your own address). Google limits how many emails an add-on can send per day: about 100 recipients for a free Gmail account and 1,500 for Google Workspace.

Once a day around the "Send around" hour, in the spreadsheet's time zone (File > Settings). Google runs daily timers loosely, so an email can arrive up to about an hour later. To send right away, use Extensions > Expiry Reminders > "Send today's reminders now".

Yes. On the next run it gets the most recent reminder it missed (for example, an item with 20 days left gets the 30-day reminder), then the remaining ones on schedule. Each reminder is sent only once.

The sidebar and Settings list the problems: usually the expiry date is not a real date. Use a date cell (Format > Number > Date) or type it as yyyy-mm-dd, e.g. 2026-11-30. Rows without an item name are skipped. Two rows with the same name and the same expiry date are reminded once.

Yes. Add a column with an email address per row and choose it as "Recipient email" in Settings. That address gets its own email with only its own items (without a link to your spreadsheet). The people in "Send reminders to" still get every item.

Yes. In "Before expiry" choose "Custom days…" and type up to 10 numbers of days before expiry, separated by commas, from 0 (the expiry day) to 3650, e.g. 120, 60, 14, 0.

Only the person who turned on reminders: the daily run and the emails belong to them. Other editors can see the status and use Renew, but can't change settings, turn reminders off or send now. To hand it over, the current owner presses "Turn off" in Settings and the other person turns reminders on again.

Yes. Turning reminders on creates a daily Google timer that runs whether the file is open or not.

Reminder emails are sent from your Google account. When reminders are on, the add-on sends Doyouok the name (with the Owner), expiry date and days left of the items due that day, to count your yearly items and to forward them to Telegram, Slack or Discord if you connected them. Notes, recipient emails and the rest of your spreadsheet are not sent. If a daily run fails or finds rows it can't read, a short problem report (tab, row, item name and the unreadable value) is sent so Doyouok can alert you. Your Google email address is used for your free Doyouok account and its alerts. See the add-on's privacy policy at doyouok.com/expiryaddon/privacy.

A record of every reminder sent, so the same reminder is never sent twice. Leave it in place: deleting it can resend reminders that were already sent.

Reminders for one spreadsheet can be sent at most 3 times a day, including "Send today's reminders now". The items that were held are sent on the next daily run.

The daily run found a problem it can't fix by itself, such as a deleted tab or a renamed column. Open Extensions > Expiry Reminders > Settings, fix what is listed, preview and save.

Open Settings and press "Turn off". The daily timer is removed and your data stays as it is. Turn reminders off before you uninstall the add-on (Extensions > Add-ons > Manage add-ons).

Update the expiry date: press Renew in the sidebar or type the new date. Reminders start over for the new date. With "Remind every week" or "Remind every day", an expired item keeps being reminded until its date changes.

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