Get the newest version
and keep every bit of student work
When you bought your simulation, you got your own private copy — yours to edit, yours forever. That's the whole point. It also means improvements I make later don't appear in your copy on their own. Here's how to pick them up in about five minutes, without losing a single student response.
What to do
Download your product again
Sign in to TPT, open My Purchases, find the product, and click Download Again. You'll get the current version at no charge — TPT gives you every future update of anything you've bought.
Click "Make a copy"
The download gives you a link. Open it and click the blue Make a copy button. A brand-new sheet appears in your Google Drive with the newest version inside it.
Give it a name you'll recognize, like adding this year to the title. Your old sheet stays exactly where it is.
Bring your student work across
Open the new sheet. Along the top menu bar — past Help — you'll see a menu named after the product. Click it and choose:
It asks for the web address of your old sheet. Open the old sheet in another tab, copy everything in the address bar, paste it in, and click OK. It copies every student's saved work into the new copy and tells you how many it moved.
If you don't see the menu yet, refresh the page once. A brand-new copy needs one refresh before its menu appears.
Give students the class code, once
When the import finishes it shows a class re-entry code — four letters, a dash, four numbers. Write it on the board.
The first time each student signs in to the new copy, they enter that code and pick a new 4-digit PIN. Everything they wrote is waiting for them. It's a one-time step per student, and the code works for two weeks.
Last thing: share the new link with your classes, the same way you shared the first one, and retire the old one.
Google will ask your permission — here's what it means
The first time you use a new copy, Google shows a permission screen. It's the same screen every Google Sheets add-on shows, and it appears once per copy. Among the lines you'll see is:
"See, edit, create, and delete all your Google Sheets spreadsheets."
That wording is Google's, not mine, and it sounds bigger than it is. It's the standard permission for any tool that has to open a second spreadsheet — which is exactly what the import does when it reaches into your old copy to fetch your students' work. Without it, the import can't see the old sheet at all.
What this product actually does with it: reads your old copy's saved student rows and settings, and writes them into the new copy. Nothing is sent anywhere. I have no access to your sheets, your students, or your Drive — the code runs in your Google account, on your files, and the whole thing is readable by you under Extensions → Apps Script.
You may also see a screen saying the app isn't verified by Google. That's because these simulations are distributed as a copy of a sheet rather than a listed Google Marketplace add-on. Click Advanced, then the "go to" link at the bottom, and continue.
The things teachers ask first
Will I lose my students' work?
No. The import copies their work into the new sheet and never changes the old one. If something looks wrong, your old sheet is still sitting in your Drive, untouched, with everything in it.
The import also refuses to overwrite anything already in the new sheet, so you can safely run it more than once.
Do my students have to make new accounts?
No accounts, ever — students only use their school email and a 4-digit PIN they choose. After an update they enter the class code once and set a PIN again. Their work is already there when they get in.
What if I customized the content myself?
Your settings on the Config tab come across, including your teacher password. Edits you made to content tabs — rewritten scenes, your own documents or questions — do not, because the new version's content has changed underneath them. Keep the old sheet open beside the new one and paste those edits back in.
Do I have to update at all?
No. Your copy keeps working exactly as it does today, forever. Updates are worth taking for security fixes and new features, but nothing breaks if you skip one, and mid-unit is a fine time to wait.
Can I do this in the middle of a unit?
You can, and the work follows students over. The smoother moment is between units or classes, since each student spends a few seconds re-entering with the class code the next time they log in.
Something went wrong. Can you help?
Yes — email me at thesimulationlabedu@gmail.com with the product name and what you saw on screen. A real teacher built this and answers the email.
Nothing is lost while we sort it out: your old sheet still has everything.
That's the whole thing
Five minutes, and your class picks up where it left off on the newest version.