122 JULY2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE389
HELPFILE&BUSINESSHELP
Acoupleofyearsago my wifebought me a
weather station, and Istarted making daily
observations. Idecided to keep arecord of
them in Google Sheets: specifically,ina
single workbook with aseparate
spreadsheet foreach month. Iuse quitea
bit of formatting, so Ibegin each month by
duplicating last month’s spreadsheet,
renaming it and deleting the data itself.
As Ireached the end of February,I
realised that at the start of the month I’d
forgotten to duplicatemyJanuary
spreadsheet, so I’d actually deleted and
overwritten my January observations. I
realise that Icould probably use the sheet’s
version history to recover January’s
weather,but then I’d lose my new
observations covering February and the
beginning of March.
Ireally don’t want to lose any data.
Is there away to selectively restore data
from an older version of the workbook,
or can you suggest another wayIcan keep
all my observations?
Mel Hines
This should be easy to fix. Using Google
Sheets’ version feature,itispossible to step
through the differences between two versions
of adocument, but unfortunately you can’t
selectively restore data. Instead, open the
workbook and from the File menu, select
Make acopy. Give the copyasensible name
like ‘Temp weather observations’.Once the
copyhas completed you should have both
the original and copied workbooks open.
Overwroteaspreadsheet
February tab,select ‘Copyto’
and choose Existing spreadsheet.
Browse to the original
spreadsheet, highlight it, and
click Select to have Google
import the February sheet
intoyour original workbook.
Now repeat the process for
March. Once this is done,you
can deletethe temporary copy.
The only thing that remains is to re-order
the spreadsheet tabs within your original
workbook. You’ll find the imported February
and March sheets all the wayover to the right
in the tab order; you can drag them to the left
until they’re in the right place.
I’ve been using aHalfords own-brand
dash cam forafew months, but arecent
discussion with afriend made me realise
that Imight be falling foul of data
protection laws.What’s the law in the
UK, and is there anything Ishouldor
shouldn’t be doing?
Richard Harvey
The short answer is that dash cams are
perfectly legal in the UK, provided theydon’t
obstruct your view out of the car or pose
any other risk. As with other electronic
equipment, you also shouldn’t fiddle with a
dash cam while driving.
By their nature,dash cams record
identifiable footage of people in public
spaces. If their use is purely forpersonal
reasons, the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) shouldn’t apply.Itdoes
apply,however,ifyou sharethe footage,orif
you’re filming on behalf of abusiness.
Forindividuals, it’s good practice to store
dash cam or CCTV footage fornolonger
than is necessary to protect your property.
Unless you’re reporting an incident to the
police,you shouldn’t share any footage in
which another person can be identified. You
should also check international laws before
travelling abroad: dash cams are banned in
Austria and Portugal, and heavily restricted
in other countries such as Switzerland.
Is my dash camlegal?
⬆Dash cams are legal in the UK, but sharing the footage might not be
Intheoriginal,selectVersion history from
the file menu and find the version from the end
of January.Scroll down to check that you have
the final January entry,then click Restore this
version to recover January’s observations.
Now switch to the copied workbook, select
the February worksheet, click the arrow on the
➡GoogleDocs’
versionhistory
cangetyouout
ofahole
⬅Make acopybefore reverting to
the original, then you can import a
newer sheet from the copy
