Google Apps Script is handy, and it will help you a lot in your work. However, as you use it, you may hit a big wall. That is the six-minute limit on execution time. As the official documentation states, the maximum allowed time per execution of Google Apps Script is 6 minutes.
If the script execution time reaches 6 minutes, the script will stop suddenly, and an error message “Exceeded maximum execution time” will be displayed.
For as long as Google Apps Script has been around there have been various solutions published for handling the 6 minute execution limit. This post from Inclu Cat presents a nice overview and solution for the execution limit.
While working on Sheets Workbook functions – converted to Apps Script I realized that I’d need to tackle the query language at some point, so I figured I may as well go the whole hog and implement a comprehensive SQL variant for Apps Script. Luckily though, I found alasql so with a few tweaks it was ready to go!
A couple Google Apps Script community contributors have shared solutions for using the AlaSQL.js library. Latest come from Bruce Mcpherson, which is included as the source link. If you use Bruce’s fiddler library his post is worth checking out as he provides examples showing how both libraries can be used together. Another version of AlaSQL.js you should look at is Alex Ivanov’s AlaSQLGS which also includes some data and code samples.
Learn how to sort your data in a Google Sheet in randomized order using Excel formulas and Google Apps Script.
Nice little snippet from Amit Agarwal which includes some Google Apps Script code for randomising the order of rows in Google Sheets. The code has some clever use of .autoFillToNeighbor(), .offset() and .sort().
Keep up to date with any feed by having new posts published to a Google Chat room using Apps Script and Webhooks. Feeds included in this example are various official Google blogs.
This is a nice solution developed by Justin Wexler which provides an easy solution which can monitor a list of blogs and post any updates to a Google Chat room. The source post provides more detail on setup and how to use the code with your own Google Chat rooms. The code also provides a useful pattern for monitoring updates from RSS feeds.
In large organizations, it’s overwhelming for admins to find inactive users in the User List of Google Admin Console. These inactive users have not been logged in their Google accounts for a long period. It imposes a potential security risk to the organizational data if these accounts are not taken care of. A free apps script to print all inactive users in Google Workspace. The following open source Google Apps Script can automate the process of printing inactive users in your domain.
Nice little snippet from xFanatical. Check out the source link for all the code and instructions for using.
Currently it is unknown if the checklist can be manipulated in Docs. Clark Lind suggests to replace a list item with a copy of one of them (which is in expected state – check/uncheck)
A nice example of the Google Apps Script developer community helping each other out. In this case Alexander Ivanov was looking for a way to interact with the new Google Docs checklist feature. A direct way to interact with these isn’t possible but some clever coding from Alex demonstrates what is currently possible.
This is a sample script for creating the colorful buttons on Google Spreadsheet on Google Apps Script.
There are some interesting features in this script example, combining the use of Google Slides to create buttons and then assigning a script function to the result using the .assignScript() method.
Learn how the Google Tables Apps Script Bot works and see an example of data enrichment using the Mattermark API.
In this post, I’ll show you how to use the new Google Tables Apps Script Bot. When something happens in your Google Table – a new row, or a value changes – a bot can be set to trigger an Apps Script function. It opens up a world of new possibilities.
While the Tables beta has been announced as joining Google Cloud it is still limited to US users. In the meantime for those outside the US we are limited to watching from the sidelines. Fortunately we can watch through the expert eyes of community members, in this case the esteemed Ben Collins. In this post Ben highlights how the experimental Tables Apps Script integration can be used to develop bots.
If you are handling data from sheets it might be useful to use the same logic as is available in the worksheet for common tasks rather than reinventing them. Dates and Times are especially complicated as JavaScript dates are not good with timezones and date arithmetic, especially since spreadsheets and scripts can exist in different timezones from each other. I’m using Temporal – dates, times and timezones and the proposed new Date system for ECMAScript to emulate what Sheets functions do, and I’ll go through the implementation as a learning aid for Temporal as much as a documentation of the functions.
In this post, I would like to introduce the xpath tester using Web Apps created by Google Apps Script.
This is an interesting little Apps Script solution from Kanshi Tanaike which uses the existing Google Sheets =IMPORTXML() in a Google Apps Script Web App to test an XPath. As there is a delay in loading some Google Sheets function results this post includes a nice little coding pattern using a do...while loop to wait for results to render.
