Before updating my spreadsheet to fetch new information from the provided scripts, I insert a new column in between the input column (A) and the results column (B). I want my new results to be next to my old results so I can compare them.
Originally, the input was in column A, and the (main) results in column B (though marginal results always appear in A). And now I want the new main results in column B (simply by updating the inputs), and the old main results in column C. Sometimes the new main results do appear in column B alongside the old main results in column C. That is why I insert a new row between to the right of A or to the left of B, so that the contents of B become the contents of the C column. But most of the time column C just disappears soonly after the contents migrate there and main results appear in column B. It's not clear if the same old main results are reappearing in B and disappearing from C or new main results are appearing in B and the old main results somehow disappeared from C. It's difficult to tell which option is happening because I can't compare the results side by side - which is exactly what I'm trying to do in the first place. And also because sometimes the old and new results are identical. This is also what I'm trying to determine.
The problem may be connected to this that a marginal portion of the results appear in column A, the same column as the input, and the main portion in B. I have no idea why this is happening (maybe because the input fetches two portions of information, though why it's considered two portions I don't know), and I don't know what the default column for input results is supposed to be; B or A.
Why are the results allocated partially in A and partially in B? And how do I ensure that I can get my old and new main portion of results to stand side by side in columns B and C?
The code I'm fetching from is:
<span class="side"> <time datetime="2014-01-11 09:07" title="
Fri 11 Jan 09:07:31 AM (3 days 6 hours and 20 minutes ago)"> Jan 11</time>
<a href="http://website.example/1" data-id="12121" class="sidelink">Text</a>
The inputs I use for this are:
=importXML("http://website.example/1", "//span[starts-with(@class, 'side')]")
The results I get are the marginal date in column A and the main text in column B.
