Search a try/catch error message for keywords to determine the error message to log using JavaScript match.
Filter an error message in a try/catch
The following Google Apps Script is designed to exercise how you might go about searching the error message in a ‘try/catch’ for keywords. I wanted this specifically for a tool I built that contains a lot of code (and hence a lot of potential error messages) between a try/catch, for which a very small number of people were experiencing a timezone issue with their Google Sheet file.
The aim was to use a JavaScript ‘match’ to find the keyword timezone and display a set of instructions for the user to resolve the issue themselves instead of just a generic error message.
I use Google Apps Script to support staff and students in my job. I enjoy dabbling with creating tools to help with automation and I freely share my learning experiences on my blog, where I also have a number of useful Google Add-ons: www.pbainbridge.co.uk
Bulk convert Google Sheets within a given Google Drive folder into PDFs and optionally delete the original file.
Bulk convert Google Sheets to PDFs using Apps Script
Features
Maximum runtime – in order to prevent the tool from reaching the limits imposed by Google you can adjust the number of minutes the tool can run for. Change this in the ‘GlobalVariables.gs’ file in the Script Editor.
Continue from where it left off – if you have a lot of Google Sheets to convert and the above runtime is reached the tool will save its progress and prompt you to run it again, avoiding any file duplication.
HTML popup – as well as the ‘Log’ sheet the tool displays a direct popup to the user if it encounters a problem.
PDF counter – after successfully running the tool will include the number of PDFs created as part of the success popup to the user.
I use Google Apps Script to support staff and students in my job. I enjoy dabbling with creating tools to help with automation and I freely share my learning experiences on my blog, where I also have a number of useful Google Add-ons: www.pbainbridge.co.uk
This is a workaround for checking the existence of file ID in Google Drive without both the access token and API key.
When you want to check whether the file of the file ID is existing in Google Drive, generally, you might use Drive API and Drive service (DriveApp) of Google Apps Script. In this case, the scope of Drive API is required to be used. By this, the access token and the API key (in the case of publicly shared files) are required to be used. But, there might be a case that the available scopes are limited. In this post, I would like to introduce a workaround for checking the existence of file ID in Google Drive without both the access token and API key.
This workaround could have been a nice addition to a recent project I was working on to audit a bunch of Google Drive file IDs. As noted in this post a big benefit of the approach is there is no need to include Google Drive authentication scopes to your project. See the source post for the code and explanation.
Learn the origin story of a solopreneur, Scott and how he built Yagisanatode over the past 5 years. …
“We had just started the second semester of a university course that I was instructing on and my operations director pulled me out of my first class for the semester within an hour and asked me to teach the advanced course. I lasted a day…”
Continuing on from yesterday’s theme of ‘code zero’ to ‘code hero’ here is another origin story this time from Scott Donald. The EDU sector is a rich vein when it comes to producing ‘noisy’ Google Apps Script developers. There are probably a number of reasons why this sector produces so many of the most impactful community contributors. Education, particularly assessment, is so admin intensive it’s maybe not that surprising that stories similar to Scott’s are quite common, but perhaps the biggest factor is educators like to educate!
After years of working adjacent to software development, first in sales and then in recruitment, I abruptly decided to take the plunge into the other side, and start coding to automate or speed up tasks of my everyday job.
The idea came by when I started using Google Sheets more heavily, and realized how powerful it is by itself, and how much more it can become with the addition of Google Apps Script, which I discovered to my surprise is actually modern JavaScript.
Sharing this post as hopefully it’s encouragement if you are new or a beginner to Google Apps Script that with some time and effort you can begin building your custom solutions in Google Workspace. Also, if nothing else it’s all a great reminder that you can quickly enhance your UI with Unicode characters:
The problem comes when you have to load that info in your app. … The more the data, the more time to load. You could use Apps Script to schedule backups of your data.
A nice introduce into Google Apps Script with an opportunity to learn how to archive data from one Google Sheet to another. This solution comes from Mozart GarcÃa who is more often seen on YouTube producing short Google Apps Script how-to in Italian (Bravo! Mozart on recently passing 4K subscribers)
There is a way to use Google Docs as a programming IDE and run JavaScript code inside the editor …Â It is no replacement for a dedicated IDE like Visual Studio code but Google Docs can be used as a JavaScript playground to quickly run code snippets.
A familiar story I hear is people with no formal coding experience starting their developer journey with Google Apps Script. I find being able to run small snippets of code are a great way to learn and a number of sites like W3 Schools and also increasingly Stack Overflow include the ability to ‘try it yourself’ with inline code runners.
If you are looking to support users getting started with Google Apps Script Amit Agarwal has this little code snippet which lets you inline/run Google Apps Script code in Google Docs. There are both limitations and considerations with this approach but as a quick way for learners to run and collaborate on small snippets, which can be contextualised with explanatory text/resources, it’s a nice starting point. Check out the source link for more details.
Loop through CSV files in Google Drive and extract their contents into specific areas in Google Sheet files.
CSV File template to copy data into
The following Google Apps Script is designed to loop through a folder of CSV files in Google Drive, extract the data, create a Google Sheet file per CSV, and insert the data into specific rows/columns.
I use Google Apps Script to support staff and students in my job. I enjoy dabbling with creating tools to help with automation and I freely share my learning experiences on my blog, where I also have a number of useful Google Add-ons: www.pbainbridge.co.uk
If you are a Google Workspace and Trello power user like me, I’m sure the thought has come across your mind of connecting your Google Apps to Trello, but every time you search for a solution you get an ad for Zapier or IFTTT. I try to avoid these solutions because they are great at making an initial connection, but if you ever want to do anything advanced, it will require you to sign up for a premium subscription. After searching and not finding answers, I decided just to try and build it for myself.
If you are a beginner to Google Apps Script this is a nice tutorial if you are interested in learning about connecting with other services, in this case Trello. Hopefully this post also illustrates that coding aspect of connecting with other services using Google Apps Script can be straightforward once access had been setup on the third party site.
In this post, we’re going to look at a script to be able to make even teams from a selection of players. I play football every Sunday and every week my friends sign up to play and most weeks there are different players playing, so we end up having to make the teams, and trying to do it as fairly as we can, which inevitably takes some time.
Nice ‘weekend project’ from Baz Roberts highlighting how Google Apps Script can be used to do a weighted random shuffle of data. The post includes a line-by-line explanation of what the script is doing and a great resource if you are at the beginning of your Apps Script journey.
