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With a weekly subscription of over 50K we probably don’t need to flag a ‘Monday morning espresso’ of Google Sheets tips from Ben Collins as you are probably already subscribed. However, given Ben recently published the 300th issue it’s a milestone worth celebrating and a chance to say ‘thank you’ to Ben for this invaluable publication.
As eloquently demonstrated on a recent episode of Totally Unscripted, Ben is the Google Sheets “King of Functions”. Ben’s expertise isn’t limited to solving Google Sheet challenges, he’s also a master at explaining his thinking and helping other people learn. If you haven’t subscribed to Ben’s newsletter follow the source link (it’s free!) and check out Ben’s website for loads of great tips and resources.
Learn how to use Smart Chips in Google Sheets to take full control of your data. Smart chips bring extra information to your Sheets.
Unleash the hidden power of Google Sheets with Smart Chips! Here’s a nice primer for our next episode of Totally Unscripted from Google Sheets magician, Ben Collins. You’ll have to tune in to the show to get the developer angle on Smart Chips, this post instead focusing on out-of-the-box features of Smart Chips in Google Sheets. Ben’s post is still incredible useful and in particular it was very interesting to read about data extraction from Smart Chips including the dot syntax when using Google Sheets formula/functions.
This post describes how I designed and ran an audience survey with over 1,700 responses, using Google Forms, Sheets, Apps Script, and ChatGPT. I’ll show you the entire process from end-to-end, including how I:
Created a survey with Google Forms
Used Apps Script to automatically say thank you to 1,700 respondents
Analyzed the response data in Google Sheets
Used AI to help me understand the qualitative data
Presented the results in Google Docs
It’s rather fitting that the 1,000th Pulse post features content by the one and only Ben Collins! Back in late 2019, when I was thinking about creating a new community site for Google Workspace developers, Ben’s encouragement was the spark that ignited AppsScriptPulse.
And today’s post by Ben is a nice example of Apps Script’s power to automate repetitive tasks. As part of this he shows how to craft personalised “thank you” emails for Google Form survey response with Google Apps Script. Ben’s insights go beyond ‘thank-you’s as he outlines how he administers and analyses customer surveys, highlighting his design choices for Google Forms and data analysis using built-in Google Sheets functions.
To take things a step further, Ben also highlights how he used ChatGPT to categorize qualitative survey responses. With Google’s recent announcement of their new AI model, Gemini, which outperforms ChatGPT in a number of academic benchmarks, it would be interesting to see how these two platforms compare for this type of analysis.
Raising a glass (or an espresso :) to Ben and this 1,000-post milestone!
Today we’ll see how to link a chart title to a cell, so that the chart title automatically reflects whatever value is in the cell
Today’s Pulse snippet comes courtesy of Ben Collins’ excellent Google Sheets Tips Newsletter, Tip 272. It uses a very basic onEdit() trigger to update a chart title based on a cell value. Ben has a great way of highlighting solutions without getting readers lost in complexity. Hopefully this example highlights the how easily you can modify Google Sheet charts using Apps Script.
If you are an Apps Script novice and looking for an easy way to learn what else is possible my own tip is to start the macro recorder, modify an embedded Google Sheets chart and then look at the resulting macro code in the Script Editor.
See how AI tools work with Google Sheets to boost your productivity. Covers ChatGPT, Google Bard, and AI add-ons.
A very informative post from Ben Collins, discussing how AI can be used to automate tasks, identify patterns, and make predictions in the context of Google Sheets. Ben provides several examples of how Generative AI can be used to improve the way you can interact with data in spreadsheets from helping with formula to generating and improving data.
As Ben points out in the post users have benefited from AI in Google Sheets for a number of years with features like Explore. Perhaps the biggest recent change is exposing Large Language Models as a service, with users able to directly access the ‘prompt’ to generate output.
Get the lowdown on the 11 new analytical functions introduced to Google Sheets in 2023, including LET and array manipulation functions.
For developers Google Sheets is becoming an increasingly rich playground. Features like the SQL like QUERY function have enabled users to do more with their data. More recently Google have released a range of new functions which I’m sure many developers and power users will be able to relate to. New functions like EPOCHTODATE, LET as well as other recent additions like MAP and REDUCE will be familiar concepts to many developers. In this post from Ben Collins the latest Google Sheet functions are reviewed.
In August 2022, Google announced named functions and 9 other new functions in Google Sheets. Named Functions let you save and name your own custom formulas, built with regular Sheets functions, and then re-use them in other Google Sheet files. It’s a HUGE step toward making formulas reusable. Learn about them all here!
Ben Collins is incredibly talented at communicating technical information in a non-technical way. This post is a great example where Ben covers the latest Google announcement on 10 new Google Sheets functions. The two standout ones are Named Functions which lets you make your own reusable function of functions, and something I’m sure many MS Excel users would appreciate, XLOOKUP.
Learn how to track link clicks using Google Sheets and Apps Script to create a simple, lightweight tracking system
You live and learn! This is a regular occurrence if you are a subscriber to the work of Ben Collins (benlcollins.com). No exception with this recent post highlighting the ping attribute which can be used in <a> HTML links. This attribute has been around for a long time, but I’m sure many people like have never come across it. In the source post from Ben you can learn how to setup an Apps Script web app which will let you record link clicks in a Google Sheet.
A note of caution is whilst ping is valid HTML not all browsers choose to use it or enable it by default, something Mozilla have decided to do in Firefox. You can head over to Mozilla mdn documentation for the browser compatibility table and here is also an interesting post on how Google tracks with the ping-attribute.
See four different API Authentication methods presented in Apps Script, including authentication in query string, headers, and OAuth2.
I got fed up digging around in my Drive folder for old scripts to refresh my memory on the syntax, so I created this reference.
It’s not a comprehensive post on how to connect to APIs, instead, it’s a short summary of common protocols for easy reference.(If you’re new to APIs, start with my Apps Script API tutorial for beginners.)
We are currently spoilt for choice with Google Apps Script community contributions. This is a great post from Ben Collins for Google Apps Script beginners highlighting different patterns used to interact with third party websites with APIs.
An API is essentially an interface that can be used by a computer programme to retrieve or interact with another application.
Master the QUERY function, the most powerful function in Google Sheets, to become a more effective data analyst
Friend of Pulse and Google Sheets guru, Ben Collins, has a new course ‘The QUERY Function in Google Sheets’. The QUERY function it lets you perform various data manipulations making it easy to reshape, aggregate and explore your data in Google Sheets. The course is designed to be suitable for everyone from beginner to advanced who are interested in ways to work more effectively with your data.
If you are not familiar with the QUERY function Ben provides one example of what is possible in Sheets Tip 204: How To Use Dates In The QUERY Function (check the linked post in this Sheet Tip for an example worksheet).
Bonus:Sheets Tip 204 includes a 50% discount on the course valid until Friday 20 May 2022 at midnight EDT.
Finally, if you are interested in using the QUERY language in Google Apps Script it is possible! Below is some code used in this copy of Ben’s example workbook based on:
// based on https://gist.github.com/tanaikech/053d3ebbe76fa7c0b5e80ea9d6396011#sample-script
function myFunction() {
const doc = SpreadsheetApp.getActive()
const spreadsheetId = doc.getId(); // or set another Spreadsheet ID.
const sheetId = doc.getSheetByName('Data').getSheetId(); // or set another Sheet ID from Spreadsheet ID.
const query = "select C, B where B > date '2000-01-01' and B <= date '2002-12-31'"; // your QUERY
const url = `https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/${spreadsheetId}/gviz/tq?tqx=out:csv&gid=${sheetId}&tq=${encodeURI(query)}&access_token=${ScriptApp.getOAuthToken()}`;
const res = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url,);
console.log(res.getContentText());
const array = Utilities.parseCsv(res.getContentText());
console.log(array);
// SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet(); // This comment line is put for automatically detecting the scopes if directly adding a spreadsheet ID.
}
