The Scenario
You are a research ops analyst. A data entry error during a participant import last month gave forty Dovetail notes the wrong participant IDs in their titles. Instead of "P044 — Checkout Flow Interview," they say things like "P012 — Checkout Flow Interview" — wrong participant, wrong note.
You found the problem. You have a Google Sheet with two columns: NoteID (the Dovetail note ID) and CorrectTitle (what it should actually say). Forty rows. Your manager wants it fixed before the research team's synthesis session Friday at 1 PM. It is Wednesday.
The bad version of Wednesday:
- Open Dovetail, search for the first NoteID
- Click the note, click edit, delete the wrong title, type the correct title, save
- Go back to the sheet, get the next NoteID, search for it in Dovetail
- Repeat forty times
- Around note twenty-five, you realize you edited the wrong note because two notes had similar IDs
- You delete the wrong note's title and have to figure out what it was supposed to say.
The fast version is one prompt and the corrections are done before you finish reading the sheet.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your spreadsheet that reads the correction sheet and applies the updates to Dovetail in bulk, so you do not have to touch the Dovetail search UI once.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Read the Title Corrections sheet (columns: NoteID, CorrectTitle). For each row, update the Dovetail note with the matching NoteID so its title is set to the value in CorrectTitle. Write "UPDATED" into column C for each successful update, or "FAILED" and the error reason if the update fails.
SheetXAI reads all forty rows, finds each note by ID, applies the corrected title, and writes the status back into column C. When it finishes, column C tells you exactly what happened to each note, right down to any that failed because the ID was not found.
What You Get
Forty corrected Dovetail note titles, with a status log in the sheet:
- Column A — the Dovetail NoteID (unchanged)
- Column B — the CorrectTitle you provided (unchanged)
- Column C — "UPDATED" or "FAILED — [reason]" for each row
The status column is not decoration. If three notes fail because the NoteID format was wrong (Dovetail expects a different prefix, for example), you can see them immediately, fix the IDs in column A, and re-run the same prompt. No hunting through Dovetail to figure out which ones did not take.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Bulk correction sheets have their own data quality problems. SheetXAI handles the validation and the updates in the same prompt.
When some NoteIDs in the sheet are formatted incorrectly
The correction sheet has some IDs with extra spaces or inconsistent prefixes. You want SheetXAI to normalize them before attempting the update.
For each row in the Title Corrections sheet, strip any leading or trailing spaces from the NoteID value in column A. Then update the corresponding Dovetail note title to the value in column B. Write the update status into column C.
When CorrectTitle values have inconsistent capitalization
Some titles in column B are all lowercase, some are title case. You want everything in title case before it goes into Dovetail.
For each row in the Title Corrections sheet, convert the CorrectTitle in column B to title case. Then update the Dovetail note with the matching NoteID to use the title-cased version. Write the status into column C.
When you want to preview the changes before applying them
The stakes are high and you want to see what SheetXAI plans to do before it actually does it.
Read the Title Corrections sheet (columns: NoteID, CorrectTitle). For each row, retrieve the current title of the Dovetail note with that NoteID and write it into column C as "Current: [title]." Then write into column D what the new title would be from column B. Do not apply any updates yet.
When the correction sheet also includes a custom field to update alongside the title
The data entry error affected more than just titles. Some notes also have the wrong ParticipantRole custom field. You want to fix both in the same pass.
Read the Field Updates sheet (columns: NoteID, CorrectTitle, CorrectRole). For each row, update the Dovetail note with the matching NoteID: set the title to CorrectTitle and the ParticipantRole custom field to CorrectRole. Write the update status into column D.
The pattern: the sheet is the source of truth, SheetXAI applies the corrections, the status column closes the loop.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any sheet with Dovetail IDs and corrected values, then ask it to apply the batch updates. The Dovetail integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to bulk import interview notes or the Dovetail in Google Sheets overview.