The Scenario
Your data warehouse team renamed a core table last week — orders_v1 is now orders_core — and twenty Hex notebook SQL cells reference the old name. Every one of them will throw an error the next time someone runs the project. You have the list: old project IDs in column A, cell IDs in column B, and the replacement SQL string in column C. Twenty rows. Twenty updates.
The Hex UI does not have a find-and-replace across notebooks. The API does allow you to update individual cells. Which means the path forward is twenty separate API calls, authenticated and formatted correctly, made in the right order.
The bad version:
- Log into the Hex API developer portal, find the update-cell endpoint, understand the request body format.
- For each of the twenty rows, make a separate authenticated POST request with the right project ID, cell ID, and SQL payload.
- Check each response for errors, note which ones failed, retry them.
You are a data engineer. Debugging twenty sequential curl commands is not what the role is supposed to involve.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Google Sheet. It reads your manifest — project IDs, cell IDs, replacement SQL — and drives the Hex API to apply each update in turn.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar with your update manifest open and paste this prompt:
For each row in my sheet, update the Hex cell with the ID in column B from the project in column A, replacing the SQL content with the string in column C — write "updated" or the error message into column D.
SheetXAI works through the rows top to bottom, calls the Hex API for each one, and writes the result into column D. Successful updates get "updated." Failed ones get the error string so you know exactly which cell needs attention.
What You Get
- Column D receives the outcome for every row — either "updated" or a specific error message from the Hex API.
- Updates are applied in row order, which matters when cells have dependencies on each other.
- Failures don't stop the batch — every row runs, and the error is surfaced in the sheet so nothing is silently skipped.
- You can re-run only the failed rows by filtering column D to error messages and asking SheetXAI to retry them.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
The replacement SQL needs a variable substituted before it's sent
Column C has SQL strings that still contain the placeholder {{schema}} that should be replaced with analytics before being sent to Hex.
For each row in my sheet, take the SQL in column C and replace every occurrence of
{{schema}}withanalytics. Then update the Hex cell ID in column B from the project in column A with the substituted SQL. Write the outcome into column D.
Some rows have already been updated and should be skipped
Column D already has "updated" in some rows from a partial run that was interrupted. You want to resume without re-sending the cells that already succeeded.
For each row where column D is empty, update the Hex cell ID in column B from the project in column A with the SQL in column C. Write the outcome or error message into column D. Skip rows where column D already says "updated."
You need to create new SQL cells rather than update existing ones
The schema change introduced a new table that needs a new SQL cell added to each project in column A, with the query from column B and the data connection ID from column C.
Create a new SQL cell in each Hex project listed in column A of my Excel sheet using the SQL query in column B and the data connection ID in column C. Write the new cell ID into column D or the error message if the creation failed.
Validate the SQL before sending, update all cells, and log the run in one pass
You want to check that each SQL string in column C contains the string orders_core (confirming the rename happened) before sending it, and you want a summary of how many cells were updated versus skipped versus errored written into cell F1 at the end.
For each row in my sheet where column C contains the text "orders_core", update the Hex cell ID in column B from the project in column A with the SQL in column C. Write "updated", "skipped — old table name still present", or the error message into column D. When all rows are done, write "X updated, Y skipped, Z errors" into cell F1.
The validation, the batch update, and the summary happen in one ask rather than three separate steps.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the Google Sheet where you track your Hex cell update manifest, then let SheetXAI work through the API calls while you focus on something else. For related Hex workflows, see Export All Hex Projects Into a Google Sheet or the Hex integration overview.