AppsScriptPulse

Read and write multiple Properties with Google Apps Script

Bulk read and write a number of key-value pairs in the User Properties store. Extract to an Object for ease of use elsewhere in your code.

Access User Properties and put the values into an Object

Access User Properties and put the values into an Object

The following Google Apps Script is a few snippets of some larger code where I needed to write (and then later read back) a number of User Properties in one go. Rather than creating multiple single write requests it is more efficient to do this in bulk.

I also needed a way to bulk read/extract these values later so I implemented a JavaScript Object that would allow me to easily call the Property name and get its value in return.

Source: The Gift of Script: Read & write multiple User Properties

Rearranging column order in Google Sheets using Google Apps Script

This is a sample script for rearranging columns on Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script.

Following on from the recent example from Scott Donald on How to sort tabs in Google Sheets with Google Apps Script, here is a handy little snippet from Kanshi Tanaike for changing the column order in Google Sheets using Apps Script and the moveColumns method.

Source: Rearranging Columns on Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script

Delete Google Calendar Events by keyword and date range

Search a date range in Google Calendar and match any events with a given string, then delete those events.

Search for and delete Google Calendar events

Search for and delete Google Calendar events

The following Google Apps Script is designed to search a date range for Google Calendar events containing a given string (something to help target those events) and then delete them.

There are 4 items at the beginning of the script to complete for your requirements:

  1. Start date – format mm/dd/yyyy – forms the date range to look for events within.
  2. End date – format mm/dd/yyyy – forms the date range to look for events within.
  3. Search string – bit of text that is unique to the events you wish to delete to differentiate them from other Calendar events you may not wish to remove. Note: is not case-sensitive and will not pick-up search string inside of another word eg ‘the’ in ‘there’.
  4. Calendar ID – typically your email address for your personal Google Calendar to search for events in.

Source: The Gift of Script: Delete Google Calendar Events by keyword and date range

Opening and closing Google Forms on time trigger using Google Apps Script

This is a sample script for opening and closing Google Forms on time using Google Apps Script.

Here’s a handy little snippet if you would like to programmatically open/close one of your Google Forms to responses for specific hours of the day. The script includes another trigger that will repeat opening/closing the Google Form for responses each day. As this snippet uses .timeBased().at(date)  it’s easy for you to modify if you want to only have the form open to responses between two specific dates/times.

Source: Opening and Closing Google Forms on Time using Google Apps Script

Validate postal address with the new Google Maps Address Validation API and Google Apps Script

 

Validate addresses using Google Maps Address Validation and Apps Script. Discover onleeaddress the add-on for Google Workspace.

I missed the announcement in November 2022 that there is a new Google Maps Address Validation API. I also missed this post from Stéphane Giron showing how you can use the Address Validation API in Google Apps Script.

The concept is simple, you provide the Address Validation API with what you think is a correct address and the API returns information on each component of the address and additional metadata. Visit the source post for more details on setup and some example code.

Source: Validate postal address with the new Google Maps Address Validation API and Apps Script

Find all matching values in Google Sheets cells with Google Apps Script

Learn how to search and find all values in an entire Google Sheet spreadsheet, in a specific sheet tab or in a range with Apps Script.

Handy little snippet from Scott Donald on using the Google Apps Script TextFinder class to find all the occurrences of matching text in a Google Sheet. The bit I particularly liked in this solution was how Scott used a .map method to return an object array of cell hits including A1 notation:

Array containing an object for each sheet containing the sheet name and the cell location (Image credit: Scott Donald)

Follow the source link for more information including a video tutorial.

Source: Find All Values in Google Sheets with Apps Script – Yagisanatode

Hiding/deleting non-consecutive rows and columns in Google Sheets using Google Apps Script

These are the sample scripts for hiding and deleting rows and columns on Google Spreadsheet [sic] using Google Apps Script. I sometimes see the questions for hiding and deleting rows and columns on Spreadsheet at Stackoverflow. So here, I would like to introduce the sample scripts for this.

In SpreadsheetApp there is the .deleteRow() and .deleteRows(), but when you have a lot of data or non-consecutive rows it can really eat into your Apps Script runtime limit. In searching for a better way of doing this I found this great solution from Kanshi Tanaike on Stack Overflow which uses the Google Sheets Advanced Service to delete multiple rows using one API call!

Using Sheets.Spreadsheets.batchUpdate isn’t just limited to deleting rows and for more examples see the source post which includes examples for hiding and deleting both rows and columns.

Source: Hiding and Deleting Rows and Columns on Google Spreadsheet using Google Apps Script

Organise Google Drive files into a JavaScript object for use with Google Apps Script

Organise Google Drive files into a JavaScript Object so that they can be looped through for each named individual.

Files to loop through and organise

Files to loop through and organise

The following Google Apps Script is designed to go through a folder of Google Drive files where a number of tutors have individual files for groups of students they teach. The code will collate all of the relevant files (specifically their IDs) that belong to each tutor, so that at a later date we can loop through the organised data set and create individual Google Sheets for each tutor and compile their student data into it.

What this code ultimately allows us to achieve is the ability to go through the files and get them organised for further coding.

In this example we have a file name pattern of ModuleCode – Tutor Name – Group Number for example ABC – Jane Doe – Grp 02. So we want to collate all of the files that belong to Jane Doe first, then move on to the next tutor (Micky Mouse in this example).

The collated data will look like this:

{
   "Jane Doe":[
      "FILE ID HERE",
      "FILE ID HERE",
      "FILE ID HERE"
   ],
   "Micky Mouse":[
      "FILE ID HERE",
      "FILE ID HERE"
   ]
}

Source: The Gift of Script: Organise files into a JavaScript Object

Merging multiple PDF files as a single PDF and converting all the pages in a PDF to PNG images using Google Apps Script

This is a sample script for merging multiple PDF files as a single PDF file using Google Apps Script. [and] This is a sample script for converting all pages in a PDF file to PNG images using Google Apps Script.

Kanshi Tanaike has recently been exploring and sharing some Apps Script solutions for handling PDF Documents using the PDF-LIB JavaScript library. So far they have looked at merging PDF files as well as converting PDF pages into PNG images.

The solution uses fetch and eval to load PDF-LIB, but with a minor modification hoisting the declaration of setTimeout you can also copy the source code into the script editor and avoid the evils of evals (a modified example here).

The Apps Script execution runtime limit will be a factor in the size of PDF Documents you can handle, but for smaller jobs a great solution to keep in mind.

Source: Merging Multiple PDF Files as a Single PDF File using Google Apps Script and Converting All Pages in PDF File to PNG Images using Google Apps Script

Google Apps Script Tip: Sorting through an array of duplicates

Sort through an array of duplicates and extract unique values into a new array.

Remove array duplicates

Remove array duplicates

The following Google Apps Script is designed to go through an array of values that contains duplicates and create a new array of only the unique ones, arranged alphabetically. I needed this code when looping through files in a Google Drive folder where tutors and their groups formed part of the filename that I needed to extract for the end file that was created.

Source: The Gift of Script: Sort through an array of duplicates