We just published a Spreadsheet Projects course on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel, developed by Eamonn Cottrell. In this course, you’ll build 33 exciting projects, covering a wide range of spreadsheet techniques and tools. Most of these projects can be done with either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, making the course versatile and accessible to anyone looking to enhance their skills.

What You’ll Build and Learn:

• Personal Finance Tracker: Manage your budget with a personalized finance tracker.

• Dynamic Calendars: Create all-day event calendars, dynamic monthly calendars, and even daily task managers.

• Automation: Learn to send automated reminder emails and notifications, automate processes with Apps Script, and integrate spreadsheets with Google Calendar.

• Custom Features: Build user-defined functions, dynamic search bars, and lightbox-style image displays directly within your spreadsheets.

• Advanced Formulas and Scripts: Explore regular expressions, dependent drop-down lists, and custom VBA scripts to create advanced functionality.

• Business Tools: Develop tools like a bulk importer for QuickBooks, a dynamic invoice generator, and a mail merge system.

• Integration with Other Platforms: Extract data from LinkedIn, embed YouTube videos in sheets, and link Google Tables to Google Docs.

• Spreadsheet Design Tips: Learn formatting tricks, Excel shortcuts, and techniques to make your spreadsheets not only functional but also visually appealing.

Why This Course is Valuable

This course emphasizes real-world applications, giving you the ability to create tools that solve everyday problems and streamline workflows. Each project is carefully crafted to teach a new skill or concept, with clear explanations and practical examples. By the end, you’ll have a portfolio of projects that demonstrate your proficiency in spreadsheets and inspire you to build even more.

Key Skills You’ll Gain:

• Data organization and visualization

• Automation and scripting with VBA and Apps Script

• Advanced formula usage and dynamic interactivity

• Integration with external platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google Calendar

• Time-saving spreadsheet shortcuts and techniques

With 33 projects covering a wide range of topics, this course offers a fun and engaging way to take your spreadsheet expertise to the next level. Whether you’re looking to improve productivity, manage data better, or impress your colleagues, these skills are invaluable.

Watch the full course on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel (4-hour watch).

It’s a lifesaver for countless financial professionals, data analysts, and teachers. But it’s also one of those programs that virtually everyone in any role can benefit from learning.

A handful of shortcuts can go a long way in increasing your productivity (and enjoyment) while using Excel.

In this article, I’ll detail some of the many shortcuts that I have found helpful throughout my studies and career.

Excel Shortcuts We’ll Cover:

• How to Execute Shortcuts in Excel

• Shortcut to Create a Table

• Shortcut to Create a Pivot Table

• Shortcut to AutoFit Column Sizes

• Shortcut to Open Format Cells

• Shortcut to Center Contents of Cell

• Shortcut to Fill Color

• Shortcut to Fill Contents Down (or Right)

• Shortcut to Show or Hide Gridlines

• Shortcut to Show all Formulas

• Shortcuts for Navigation in Excel

• Shortcut to Open the AutoFilter Menu in Excel

• Shortcut to Create a Slicer in Excel

• Shortcut to Create Checkboxes in Excel

• Shortcut to Create Charts in Excel

• Other Notes

• More Shortcuts

• Got Sheet

Here’s a video walkthrough of everything we’ll cover in this article:

How to Execute Shortcuts in Excel

In Excel, the more you can learn to do without touching your mouse, the better. Often, by keeping your hands on your keyboard, you can save a lot of time in each project.

As such, virtually every command imaginable is available as a keyboard shortcut.

The basic ones like CTRL + S for save and CTRL + C for copy are present. But Excel goes a step further…

The real power comes from the alt shortcuts. By pressing sequences of keys that typically start with alt, almost all of the actions in the Ribbon become available.

By simply pressing the alt key, all of the shortcut sequences available from the current view become highlighted in yellow on the ribbon:

Incidentally, some of the shortcuts’ sequences are separated by commas, while at other times two letters appear next to each other. Their execution is the same. Simply press them in sequence.

Below, you’ll find some of my favorites, but keep in mind that you can easily view all the available shortcuts at any time by pressing alt and then continuing to press the appropriate keys for the corresponding tabs and actions.

Shortcut to Create a Table

Keyboard Shortcut: ctrl + t

Tables in Excel are often the preferred format to begin manipulating and visualizing data. As long as the active cell is inside your data range, pressing ctrl + t will pop up a dialog and automatically select the data range to be used for the table.

It is adjustable if Excel gets a column or row wrong, and you can also toggle table headers on or off from this initial box.

Shortcut to Create a Pivot Table

Keyboard shortcut: alt + n, v, t

Want to appear a lot smarter than you are? Learn the basics of pivot tables in ten minutes. Your coworkers will remain impressed for weeks.

To create a pivot table, simply click somewhere in your data range and press ALT + n, v, t.

Excel is smart enough to recognize the data range you likely want included even if it isn’t already formatted as a table.

A dialog box will pop up for you to confirm the data range and location for the pivot table.

Shortcut to AutoFit Column Sizes

Keyboard Shortcut: alt + h, o, i

Ever get tired of resizing your columns so that the text in the cells doesn’t clip or spill? You can always double click the column boundary headings. This resizes the column to fit the widest cell’s contents.

The keyboard shortcut is much more efficient and allows you to autofit multiple columns in one fell swoop. Simply click and drag the column boundaries to select any number of columns. Execute the alt + h, o, i shortcut and all the columns in your active range will autofit their width.

You can also autofit cells individually by selecting one or more active cells and performing the same shortcut.

Shortcut to Open Format Cells

Keyboard Shortcut: CTRL + 1 or alt + h, fm

Unless you are content with mediocrity, you’ll be formatting the cells in your spreadsheet at some point to create more readable, user-friendly content.

The simplest shortcut to open up the Format Cells window is CTRL + 1, although if you want to flex your dexterity, alt + h, fm will get you there as well.

Shortcut to Center Contents of Cell

Keyboard Shortcut: (horizontal) alt + h, a, c,

(vertical) alt + h, a, m

We have it easy compared to web developers. There seems a never-ending supply of articles and videos reminding developers how to center divs.

In Excel, we need only remember two quick shortcuts.

• For horizontal centering: alt + h, a, c

• For vertical centering: alt + h, a, m

There are other shortcuts for left, right, top and bottom alignment, but most of the time when we change the original alignment, it’s to center it.

Shortcut to Fill Color

Keyboard Shortcut: alt + h, h

For a quick highlight, it takes precious seconds to mouse up to the fill color icon. Pressing alt + h, h quickly toggles the color selection open.

Once it’s open, you can leave your mouse to the side and arrow down to your favorite color

Shortcut to Fill Contents Down (or Right)

Keyboard Shortcut: (down) CTRL + D, (right) CTRL + R

One of the most powerful features of Excel is the ability to drag formulas and functions down or across many cells, effectively reproducing a single calculation many times on different pieces of data.

By typing a formula in cell A8 in the image below, we can then highlight A8 and drag down to our heart’s content. Then, by pressing CTRL + D, the formula will be copied down into every highlighted cell.

By default, it will also preserve the relative reference of the cell. In other words, the next cell will contain the formula A7 + A8 and then A8 + A9, and so on.

Shortcut to Show or Hide Gridlines

Keyboard Shortcut: alt + w, vg

The mark of a real data analyst is not the quality of their reports, but the precision of their workbook. Gridlines have got to go. If you need lines, you can add borders.

Toggle off the gridlines with alt + w, vg.

And if you need those borders immediately, highlight your data range and press alt + h, b to open up the border menu. If you simply need all borders, alt + h, b, a will do the trick

Shortcut to Show all Formulas

Keyboard Shortcut: CTRL + ~

You’ll likely never lose control of a workbook.

But in the event you access one of your less rigorous colleague’s workbooks and need to see what functions they’ve Frankensteined together, press CTRL + ~ to display all the functions instead in the spreadsheet.

Shortcuts for Navigation in Excel

Keyboard Shortcuts: CTRL + arrow keys (and others)

Navigating the grid can be very fast with the keyboard. Pressing CTRL + the arrows, the home and the end buttons will warp you all over the active sheet.

Using the arrows and CTRL, you go to the last nonblank cell in the row or column.

Using CTRL + home or end, you go to the beginning and the end of the workbook, respectively. (When inside a table, home and end take you to the beginning and end of the table only.)

Shortcut to Open the AutoFilter Menu in Excel

Keyboard Shortcut: alt + down arrow

Another superpower in Excel is the ease with which we can filter and sort large pieces of data. To access the AutoFilter Menu quickly, press alt + down arrow while in the header for the column you’d like to filter.

Shortcut to Create a Slicer in Excel

Keyboard Shortcut: alt + n, sf

For an even more user-friendly method of sorting, you can insert a slicer directly onto the spreadsheet by pressing alt + n, sf.

Shortcut to Create Checkboxes in Excel

Keyboard Shortcut: alt + n, cb

If you’re anything like me, you’ll find a way to use checkboxes in almost every spreadsheet you create. They’re extremely useful for toggling selections on and off in a workbook, and as of June 2024, Excel has made them available in production Excel.

Press alt + n, cb to insert a checkbox in a cell.

Shortcut to Create Charts in Excel

Keyboard Shortcut: alt + n, r

There are a ton of chart types in Excel. To quickly open up the recommended charts dialog box, we can press alt + n, r.

Or, if we know we want a specific type of chart, there are multiple options to shortcut straight to them, like alt + n, C1, alt + n, N1, alt + n, SA and so on.

More Shortcuts

There are a zillion shortcuts available in Excel. If you want to check out the full list, you can find a current version maintained by Microsoft here.

Got Sheet

Come join my free newsletter, Got Sheet. I show people how to get good at spreadsheets every week.

You can find me over on YouTube as well.

Well, new is a bit of an overstatement. Excel has had proper tables for many, many years, and it's been a point of contention in the spreadsheet community.

In this article, I'll break down what exactly tables are, why they're important, and then see how Google Sheet's new tables stack up against Microsoft Excel's.

Here is a video walkthrough of everything we'll cover:

What's a Table?

A table is a way of structuring and formatting data in a spreadsheet. It groups together rows and columns of data so that they can be more easily filtered, grouped, and analyzed.

Many people would look at the following bit of data and wrongly assume that it's already in a table.

Data in Excel

This is merely well organized rows and columns of data in Excel. Each column is a separate category of information, that is ids, names, emails, job titles, and salaries.

Each row represents one entry of that data. So, you'd put your id, name, email, job title and salary going left to right in a row.

Simple, yes?

A table contains all the same data, but by formatting it as a table we can unlock a whole lot of additional functionality.

The first of which is the appearance itself. When we create a table, Excel immediately colors our data with a dark header row and bands of alternating colors.

Table in Excel

Sheets does the same thing, as we can see below.

Table in Google Sheets

So, a table is simply a way of managing and grouping data more easily. But it goes much further than just formatting, as we'll see.

Why are Tables Important?

Tables help reduce errors. When dealing with data, we are always making sure the data is clean and that we don't have errors in our formulas.

Tables help keep things orderly simply by being structured and formatted well. But as we'll see in the formula section in a moment, they also allow us to reduce errors in formulas by dynamically calculating things for us

How to Create a Table in Excel and Sheets

In Microsoft Excel, creating a table is as easy as clicking anywhere in the data range and pressing CTRL + T. Immediately, Excel will predict the data range for the table and ask you to confirm this.

Excel table data range

Alternatively, you can find the same create table option from the Insert Menu in the Ribbon at the top.

Excel insert menu

Over in Sheets, you'll need to either right click in a cell in the data range, or select the option from the Format menu to Convert to Table.

Convert to table options in Google Sheets

One caveat in Sheets: if you right click in a cell, you have to select the whole data range for it to convert to a table. Whereas, if you select Format - Convert to table from the menu, it is (like Excel) smart enough to predict the whole data range.

A small thing. But Excel takes the prize for ease of creation.

Convert to table in Google Sheets

⭐Winner: EXCEL

How to Format Tables in Excel and Sheets

As we saw initially, some formatting is done as soon as we create a table.

From here, though, both programs allow for further customization.

In Sheets, we can select the dropdown in the top left next to the table name to access a few options immediately. For the most part, we can simply change the alternating colors of the table.

Formatting options in Google Sheets

If we select Custom, it opens up the full alternating colors menu that is also accessible through the Format menu. This gives us more control over the colors, but it's all aesthetic.

Alternating colors menu in Google Sheets

Meanwhile in Excel, we have the same options with a few more toggle selections for styling. For instance, we can check the first column to bold the text in the id column or we toggle between banded columns and/or rows.

And on the far right of the Table Design tab in the Ribbon, there are a ton of prebuilt styles that we can toggle on and off.

Table design in Excel

Both programs give plenty of options here, and this is mostly to make the tables look good. But Excel comes out on top with more options.

⭐Winner: EXCEL

How to Sort Tables in Excel and Google Sheets

In both programs, there is a dropdown toggle button in each of the header row's cells. Selecting this in Excel allows us to sort ascending or descending...or even by color.

sort in excel

For instance, if we have some of our data using a blue font color, we can actually sort it by that color:

Sort by color in Excel

What about Google Sheets? Yep, same deal there. It will also detect when different colors are used and allow you to do the same type of sorting.

Sort by color in Sheets

Excel does have a Custom Sorting dialog box that can drill down into more detail. For instance, you can add levels of sorting.

Using our color example, we can first sort by the blue font colors in the email color and then by the red font colors in the job title column.

Multiple column sorting in Excel

Google Sheets can do the same thing, but not from the header drop downs. The header drop down sorting is restricted to one row at a time in Sheets.

But, if you select the entire table's data range and then Data - Sort Range - Advanced range sorting options, you are able to sort by multiple columns in Google Sheets.

Advanced sorting in Google Sheets

Sheets' advanced sorting is not as powerful as Excel's, though. You are only able to sort ascending or descending by value. Excel takes the cake on this one by a hair.

⭐Winner: EXCEL

How to Filter Tables in Excel and Google Sheets

Filtering works exactly the same as sorting. In both programs, click the dropdown selector in the header row to see the options for filtering.

In both programs, we have the same options. We can filter by color just like in our sorting. We can filter by values by either selecting all, none, or individual values. And we can filter by condition.

Here's Google Sheet's menu:

Filtering in Google Sheets

And here's Excel's menu. All the same options are available. Both programs allow for custom filter formulas to be entered as well.

Filtering in Excel

⭐Winner: TIE

How to Use Tables in Formulas in Excel and Google Sheets

One of the big reasons to use tables lies in formulas. Whether you use Excel or Sheets, you are likely taking advantage of built-in functions and the ability to create custom formulas for analyzing your data.

By holding your data in a table, your formulas can reference that data dynamically.

Meaning, if you add rows of data to your table, any formulas referencing those table values will update automatically.

The risk of breaking things by adding data decreases dramatically with the use of tables.

Here's a simple example. If we wanted to combine the first and last names into one cell, we could concatenate them with this formula =Salary[first_name]&" "&Salary[last_name].

In Excel, we reference a table by its name, in this case, Salary. Then within brackets, we reference a column name, [last_name].

Spill formula in Excel

We can do the exact same in Sheets.

Formula referencing in Sheets

There's one powerful difference, though. In Excel, the formula will spill down. Meaning, we only have to write it once at the very top, but because it sees that we're referencing values in a table, it will spill down to every row in the table.

In Google Sheets, we still have to drag the formula down.

Now, sometimes, we may not want things to spill down. In this case we can use different syntax in Excel. Instead of the column name within brackets, we can add an @ sign and another set of brackets. This tells Excel to only make the calculation on one row:

Formula referencing in Excel

Excel flexes on this one. It's much more powerful to use tables in formulas in Excel than in Sheets.

⭐Winner: EXCEL

How to Change Table Range in Excel and Google Sheets

What if we want to extend our table or remove data from it? Both Google Sheets and Excel allow us to do this easily.

Say we want to add a column for the full name of a person. In both programs, if we simply type in full_name in G1 to the right of our last column, that column will become a part of the table's data range.

Anytime we type in an adjacent column or row to our table data, the programs will assume the table needs to extend to include it.

Then, we can use a version of the formula from our previous example to insert the full names. Now that we are inside of the table, though, it's not necessary to include the title of the table in our formula.

Now, all that's needed in Excel is =[@[first_name]]&" "&[@[last_name]].

Reference table columns in Excel

For Google Sheets, it's the same inside the table as outside it: =Table2[first]&" "&Table2[last]. Sheets also requires us to drag the formula down. It does not handle spilling like Excel (yet).

Reference table columns in Sheets

To add columns within a table, we can right click the column name and select insert.

Insert column in Excel

Google has a slight edge here in that you can select whether to insert to the left or the right, whereby Excel only inserts to the left.

Insert column Google Sheets

Inserting rows is exactly the same. Excel allows for inserting rows above, while Sheets allows you to select above or below.

Inserting rows Google Sheets

In both programs, deleting rows and columns is as simple as selecting the row(s) or column(s), right clicking, and selecting delete.

In Excel you have the added benefit of a keyboard shortcut. CTRL + - will delete the selected rows or columns.

Both programs will also allow you to convert a table back to a regular data range. In Excel, it's the Convert to Range button in the Table Design tab of the menu

Convert to Range option in Excel

And in Google Sheets, it's the Revert to unformatted data option from the table dropdown menu.

Revert to unformatted data option in Sheets

⭐Winner: TIE

How to Add a Total Row in a Table

There's a good chance you'll want to total up the amounts in a column. How easy is this to add in a table?

You can do it in both programs, but...

Excel makes it incredibly easy. There's a toggle option for this in the Table Design menu in the Ribbon. Toggle this on, and a Total row is automatically included and calculated at the bottom.

Total row in Excel

Can you do the same in Sheets?

Yes, you've just got to do it yourself.

Total row in Sheets

⭐Winner: EXCEL

Who Wins?

Well, it's no surprise that Excel comes out on top. Sheets users (myself included) have a lot to be excited about with the ability to finally create proper tables. By and large, the functionality is just as powerful as Excel.

And much like many features compared between the two programs, Sheets can probably get the job done for most use cases.

Excel, as per normal, simply does more and does it a little bit better.

I'm Eamonn, and I'll help you get good at spreadsheets. Join my free newsletter, Got Sheet, here.

If you want to follow along with the sheet I used, you can access it here. The link will prompt you to create a copy of the spreadsheet and accompanying Apps Script file.

What is an Image Lightbox?

image thumbnails in a spreadsheet

An image lightbox is what we call it when we hover over or click on an image and it pops up into a bigger version on-screen.

It’s something we’re used to seeing on websites, and it gives things a nice, professional touch when done well.

What about in a spreadsheet, though? 🤔

Well, we’ve got two versions of a solution:

1. Using built-in functions to display a larger version in a larger cell.
2. Using Apps Script to actually create a popup box on top of our spreadsheet.

As a bonus to the first solution, we’ll also include optional Apps Script to make things a little smoother. More on that below 😉.

As usual, here's a walkthrough video where I go through the whole process:

Image Popup With Built-In Functions

First, we need images in cells. From the top menu, Insert - Image - Insert image in cell will do the trick for this.

inserting image in spreadsheet cell

Next, we need to merge some cells together so that there’s a larger container that will hold our larger picture after the next step.

You can use one cell and change the width and height of it, but in my example sheet, the “lightbox” area is sharing rows with the rest of the data so I didn’t want to do that.

a large range of merged cells

In the column next to my image thumbnails, I’ve put checkboxes by selecting Data - Data validation - Criteria: Checkboxes from the top menu.

This will let us select which image to popup in our lightbox area.

data validation in google sheets

I’ve named the range A2:A11 as pics and the range B2:B11 as checkboxes to allow for easier readability in the function we’ll write next.

named ranges in google sheets

Now all that remains is one XLOOKUP() function to put inside our lightbox range.

=XLOOKUP(TRUE,checkboxes,pics,"") is the function that searches for a check and then displays the corresponding image. By putting this in a big cell or range of merged cells, we can display whichever small image we select in the bigger area.

xlookup function in google sheets

Remember, all a checkbox is doing is storing either a TRUE (checked) or a FALSE (unchecked) value.

checkboxes and image thumbnails in google sheets

⚠️WARNING⚠️

This does have one issue, though. Do you know what it is?

XLOOKUP() is going to return whichever checkboxes it comes to first with a TRUE value. So if you have multiple images checked, it’s only going to display the first one it gets to, not the most recently clicked one.

To get around this, let’s write some code.

Apps Script Improvement

Open up Apps Script by selecting Extensions - Apps Script from the top menu.

opening apps script in google sheets

Delete the built-in function in the code editor that opens. We'll start from scratch with an onEdit function:

function onEdit(e) {

We need to grab the range that we are currently editing.

var range = e.range

Then the checkboxes range.

var checkboxes = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getRangeByName("checkboxes")

Then we need to check whether what we just edited is in that checkbox range.

if (range.getColumn() == 2 && range.getRow() >= 2 && range.getRow() <= 10)

If it was a checkbox, then we want to uncheck all the checkboxes and re-check the one we just checked.

// Uncheck all other checkboxes in the range
checkboxes.uncheck();
// Check the edited cell
range.check();

Now, there is a slight delay when you run the code. After clicking a checkbox, all of them are cleared right before the one you checked gets checked again.

Here’s what the full code looks like:

function onEdit(e) {
  var range = e.range;
  var checkboxes = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getRangeByName("checkboxes")

  // Check if the edited cell is a checkbox in the desired range
  if (range.getColumn() == 2 && range.getRow() >= 2 && range.getRow() <= 10) {
    // Uncheck all other checkboxes in the range
    checkboxes.uncheck();
    // Check the edited cell
    range.check();
  }
}

A Real Popup Box with HTML

modal dialog box in google sheets

Okay, that’s all fine and dandy. What about the real thing, though?

This takes more Apps Script, but it’s doable thanks to the built-in howModalDialog method.

This is basically a popup window that can hold HTML. And since the internet is built with HTML, all we need to do is use a little bit to plug in an image.

This method requires an image live on the internet somewhere. So, we cannot reference the image that we've embedded in our sheet and use it in the HTML we're going to write.

Weird, I know.

Let’s find an image URL we can use. I’ve grabbed an eagle off of unsplash.

We’ll hold this in a variable.

var imageURL = "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1715002383611-63488b956401?q=80&w=1887&auto=format&fit=crop&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&ixid=M3wxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8fA%3D%3D"

Then we need to build our HTML. In our case, all we want is one element, so we won’t worry ourself with constructing a full, semantically correct page (although we certainly could 😉)

Another variable will hold this img element:

var html = '<img src="' + imageURL + '" style="max-width: 100%; max-height: 100%;">';

We have access to Class Ui in Apps Script where we can “…add features like menus, dialogs, and sidebars.”

  var ui = SpreadsheetApp.getUi();

And finally, by calling the showModalDialog() method, we can generate HTML from our html variable using the Class HtmlService.

ui.showModalDialog(HtmlService.createHtmlOutput(html).setWidth(700).setHeight(1000), 'Eagle 🦅');

A final touch is to add a thumbnail version of our eagle image into our spreadsheet so that it is inserted on top of our cells (this next bit won’t work if it’s embedded in a cell itself).

Once it’s in our sheet, we can click the three black dots in the top right corner and assign a script directly to the image.

assigning a script to image in google sheets

We named our script displayImagePopup, so this is what we enter. Make sure to leave off the parentheses when typing it into the image's script form.

assigning script

Now, anytime we click the small image of the eagle, a popup box opens with the full image.

Here’s what the full code looks like:

function displayImagePopup() {
  // Get the active sheet
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var imageURL = "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1715002383611-63488b956401?q=80&w=1887&auto=format&fit=crop&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&ixid=M3wxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8fA%3D%3D"
  // Create an HTML string for the popup
  var html = '<img src="' + imageURL + '" style="max-width: 100%; max-height: 100%;">';

  // Show the dialog
  var ui = SpreadsheetApp.getUi();
  ui.showModalDialog(HtmlService.createHtmlOutput(html).setWidth(700).setHeight(1000), 'Eagle 🦅');
}

Thank you so much!

I hope this was helpful for you.

Check out my YouTube channel and free newsletter to get good at spreadsheets!

Creating a grid of alphabets helps illustrate this practice. If the first letter in your text is A and the first letter in your key is L, you would find the encrypted letter, L, where the plaintext and key intersect:

screenshot of a grid of alphabets

So your text to encrypt might look like this: attackatdawn, your key might be this: LEMONLEMONLE, and the ciphertext would be this: LXFOPVEFRNHR.

This is the same example used on the Wikipedia page which I'll walk you through in this article.

You could create a cipher encoder/decoder with any number of programming languages. But spreadsheets are a nice tool to use for this kind of project because they come with some pretty robust built-in functions that will help us dissect the cipher.

I've chosen Google Sheets because it's a hair simpler to jump into, especially if you already have a Gmail account. But you can do all the same things in Microsoft Excel.

Here's the Google Sheet I used.

If you'd like to check out a video walkthrough, here you go 👇

Spreadsheet Preparation

This isn't too complicated. We need a grid of alphabets. No, you don't have to type them in over and over, either.

In fact, you don't even have to type the whole first alphabet. Let's use Unicode characters. For capital letters, the Unicode for the alphabet starts with 65.

The CHAR() function in spreadsheets converts a number into a character according to the current Unicode table.

The COLUMN() function returns a number corresponding to the current column where column A returns 1, column B returns 2, and so on.

So if we start our alphabet in column B, we can access each letter by adding 63 to the COLUMN() function and wrapping it in the CHAR() function:

=CHAR(COLUMN()+63)

Then we can drag this over to the right until we've got the full alphabet.

screenshot of CHAR and COLUMN functions

The same thing applies going down. We'll just use the ROW() function instead:

=CHAR(ROW()+63)

screenshot of CHAR and ROW functions

Then we can reference the cell above and to the right for every cell below to fill out the full alphabet grid:

screenshot of spreadsheet cell

The only one that will be different will be in the last column where we'll need to reference the first column to have the alphabet wrap:

screenshot of spreadsheet cell

We only have to do this on the second line. Then, select the full second row and drag the formulas down to fill out the grid:

screenshot of spreadsheet grid

At this point, you can copy CTRL + C and paste values only CTRL + SHIFT + V for all the alphabet. If you add or shift rows, the alphabets may get skewed since their formulas reference fixed columns.

The Game Plan

Now the fun stuff. We want our text to be encrypted automatically. Let's highlight three cells: one for the text to encrypt, one for a key, and then a blank cell for our encrypted text:

screenshot of text to encrypt

Note: the key needs to be the same length as the text to encrypt/decrypt. In this example, the key is the word LEMON, but we extend it by repeating it for every character we need to encrypt.

Now we need to do three things:

1. Split out each character of our text into its own cell
2. Loop through each character and encrypt it based on the corresponding key character.
3. Join all those characters together and place the result in our encrypted text cell.

Split Text to Setup

Interestingly, we cannot use the SPLIT() - or if you're in Excel, the TEXTSPLIT() - function without a delimiter. That is, we can't just tell it to split each character without there being something in between the characters.

So, we have to get fancy. In the video walkthrough, I explore a Google Sheets-specific approach using regular expressions...which are hard fun.

Here's what it looks like, and it involves creating character groups, inserting something in between each one, and then splitting using that same something as the delimiter. I used a blank space as the thing which I inserted and then split by:

=SPLIT(REGEXREPLACE(AG6,"(.)","$1 ")," ")

gif of woman saying, that's just hard

Excel users and mortals, fear not – there's a more elegant way that I'll show you here that can be done in either program by using the MID() and COLUMNS() functions.

The MID() function extracts a segment of a string, and COLUMNS() returns the number of columns in an array. By nesting COLUMNS() inside MID() we can one by one extract each character from the string:

=MID($AG$6,COLUMNS($AG6:AG6),1)

screenshot of MID and COLUMNS functions

By locking $AG6 as the first part of the array referenced in the COLUMNS() function, this number adds one for every column we drag our formula over.

Drag this over until you reach the end of the text to encrypt. Every character should be in its own cell now. Do the same for the key.

screenshot of spreadsheet cells

How to Use XLOOKUP() to Encrypt

Below each pairing of plaintext and key text, we will now do a double XLOOKUP().

Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds.

Here's what it looks like, and let's walkthrough what's happening:

=XLOOKUP(AD9,$B$2:$B$27,XLOOKUP(AD10,$B$2:$AA$2,$B$2:$AA$27))

screenshot of double XLOOKUP functions

For the beginning XLOOKUP(), we are looking up the plaintext and we're referencing the first plaintext alphabet for our lookup range. But then for our result range, we're opening up another XLOOKUP()...

This is because we still have to use the correct key alphabet to return an encrypted value.

So, we need the second XLOOKUP() to return a full alphabet based on the position of the key character.

We're using the key character as our lookup value, we're using the first alphabet along the top key row for our lookup range, and then we're returning the whole grid as our result range. This will let us return a full alphabet which is in turn referenced as the result range for our first XLOOKUP().

screenshot of alphabet grid and XLOOKUP example

You can see the second XLOOKUP() by itself in the picture above. The formula is in the top left. We're using the first letter of key text as the lookup value. The lookup range is the top alphabet in the purple box. The result range is the whole grid in the blue box. And the returned alphabet is the one that starts with L in the red box.

You can see it being returned underneath the formula where there is an arrow in the picture.

Drag the double XLOOKUP() function over to encrypt every character of the plaintext with the key text.

Join Text for Final Solution

Now that we've encrypted each letter, we want them to be joined into one string and returned in our encrypted text cell.

To do this, we can use the JOIN() function - or TEXTJOIN() for Excel - with an empty quote as the delimiter.

=JOIN("",AD11:AO11)

screenshot of JOIN function

And voilà! We've just encrypted a string using a double XLOOKUP().

How to Decrypt Text

Decryption works exactly the same. The only difference is the placement of the second XLOOKUP(). Instead of using it as the result range, we're using it as the lookup range:

=XLOOKUP(AD20,XLOOKUP(AD21,$B$2:$AA$2,$B$2:$AA$27),$B$2:$B$27)

screenshot of decryption double XLOOKUP example

Thanks for reading

I hope this was helpful for you and that you learned something new!

You can find more of my tutorials on YouTube, and please sign up for my newsletter about coding and spreadsheets here.

You'd be surprised how many different ways there are to do things in Excel. Below, I'll show you 9 ways to add two or more numbers. You can skip to a certain section if you'd like to see that method:

1. Manual
2. References
3. SUM()
4. SUMIF()
5. SUBTOTAL()
6. AGGREGATE()
7. VBA
8. Python
9. Highlight

Video Walkthrough

If you prefer to watch me go through each of these in a demo workbook, here's a video for that:

To write a formula or a function in Excel (which we'll be doing in the examples below), start out by simply typing an equals sign in a cell.

=

This triggers Excel to know that what follows will be a formula or a built-in function.

Manual

This is simplest version of a formula in Excel. Start out with the equals sign, and then type in the numbers and operation you want to do. Just like a calculator:

=6+102

Pressing enter will result in 108 being listed in the cell

screenshot of manual addition in Excel

References

The next step up in Excel is to start using cell references. Notice that on the top and on the left side of the main spreadsheet area, there are columns designated by letters and rows designated by numbers.

screenshot of rows and columns

We can refer to specific cells using "A1" notation. Like a set of (x,y) coordinates on a graph, this simply means that by referring to C4, for instance, we are referring to the cell found in column C, row 4.

To add numbers using references, we start again with the equals sign and refer to the values in specific cells directly.

This has the added advantage of being dynamic. If a value is changed in one of the cells, the result of the sum automatically updates.

=SUM(A1+A3) provides us with the value of the numbers in A1 and A3.

SUM()

The first two methods are examples of using formulas. We manually give Excel a series of instructions that it executes.

Excel also has built-in functions which we can use by starting with the equals sign and then referring to the function by name. Functions also take variables which we pass to them by using a set of parenthesis after the name of the function.

The SUM() function takes either a range or a comma-separated list of cell references. It then returns the sum of all the numbers in the range.

You can select a range by either clicking and dragging or by declaring one by typing in the A1 notation with a colon in between the top left cell and the bottom right cell of the range.

SUM(A5:A11) adds all the numbers in cells A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, A11

screenshot of the SUM() function

SUMIF()

A more powerful version of SUM() is the SUMIF() function. This adds conditional logic. It needs at least two variables: a range and a condition. We could give it the same range as above and have a condition be that it only adds up numbers that are greater than zero.

A third, optional variable is a sum_range. This allows for us to match a condition in one range with the sum of values in another range.

In the example sheet, I have inserted checkboxes in column C. Checkboxes in Excel are a new feature. This is the range that I'm checking for a condition. The condition is TRUE. Now I enter the range that I want to sum if the condition in the corresponding row of the first range is indeed TRUE.

When using a range and a sum_range separately like this, they do have to be of the same size or it will not behave as you want it to.

screenshot of SUMIF() function in Excel

SUBTOTAL()

Ok, here's where things start to get interesting.

The SUBTOTAL() function allows us to do a ton of different things. Ultimately, it returns a subtotal of a list or database. But inside of SUBTOTAL() there are other functions. The first argument that we give SUBTOTAL() is a number corresponding to one of these functions:

screenshot of functions within SUBOTAL from Microsoft Excel

Looking at the function list, we see that 9 or 109 both correspond to the SUM() function which we want to use. If we have hidden rows in our range that we don't want to include in the sum, we use 109 to ignore those – if not, simply 9.

So the function looks like this: SUBTOTAL(9,B3:B12). This sums B3:B12 even if one or more of those rows are hidden.

screenshot of SUBTOTAL in Excel

AGGREGATE()

We can think of AGGREGATE() as a souped-up version of SUBTOTAL(). It works in the same way but has a lot more built-in functions (19 of them) and allows for detailed specificity on what values, if any, to ignore in the calculation.

AGGREGATE(function_num, options, ref1, [ref2], …) is the full reference formula. Again, we pass it a number corresponding to one of the 19 built-in functions, then an optional argument for what type of values to ignore, followed by the reference array and an optional second reference array.

screenshot of options for Aggregate function from Microsoft Excel

For our example, we again use 9 as our function number, but we can use option 5 to explicitly exclude hidden rows:

screenshot of Aggregate function in Excel

VBA

Now we're warmed up. Let's get overly complicated.

gif of complicated nonsense

Visual Basic for Applications is Microsoft's baked-in programming language in Microsoft Office applications.

Open it up by selecting Visual Basic from the Developer tab.

screenshot of VBA in Developer tab in Excel

If you don't see the developer tab, go to File - Options - Customize Ribbon and add it.

screenshot of Customizing Ribbon in Excel

Also, Alt +11 is the keyboard shortcut to open up VBA.

Once here, we can write code to do all sorts of things. Our example isn't very practical since a function will do it quicker, but the following code will Sum the range A1:A11, put the result in F11 and display a message pop-up with the result:

Sub AssignSumVariable()
   Dim result As Double
   'Assign the variable
   result = WorksheetFunction.Sum(Range("B1:B11"))
   'Show the result
   MsgBox "The total of the ranges is " & result
   'Put the result in cell F9
  Range("F9") = result
End Sub

screenshot of VBA in Excel

Python

Yes, this is now ridiculous. But, it's good to know what Excel can do when you have more complicated tasks that require tools like VBA or Python. At the time of this writing, Python is available in Excel for people using the Beta Channel of Excel.

gif of woman saying "seems like overkill"

You can check your eligibility and join Microsoft 365 Insider if you want to test out new features like this in the future.

Go to File - Account, and then select the 365 Insider channel button for more info.

screenshot of Microsoft 365 Insider options

Once Python is usable in Excel, you activate it by typing =py and then the tab key. This turns the cell into a Python command line.

screenshot of Python command line in Excel

From here, we can write Python code directly in the cell. The following code uses the custom xl() function for Python to use a range. We hold the range in the numbers variable and then using dot notation, we sum that range with the numbers.sum() line:

numbers = xl("'Sum➕'!$B$3:$B$12")
numbers.sum()

Now to execute the Python code, click CTRL + ENTER.

What we now see is that we've got a Python Series in the cell:

In order to just display the answer, we can click the Python Output selector just to the left of the formula bar and select Excel Value:

screenshot of Python Output in Excel

Now, our cell is updated with the correct value.

screenshot of cells in Excel

The real value of Python in Excel comes with manipulating dataframes using built-in libraries like Matplotlib, NumPy, or Pandas.

Okay, take a breath, we'll finish with something simple and easy...👇

Highlight

Bonus time. If you highlight cells in Excel by either clicking and dragging mouse over a range, or by CTRL+ Left-Click individual cells, some automatic calculations are visible in the bottom right of the window, including the Average, Count and Sum:

If the sum isn't immediately visible, right clicking will pull up auto-calculations that you can toggle on and off:

screenshot of auto-calculation options in Excel

Thanks for reading!

Hope this is helpful for you!

Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamonncottrell/

And YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@eamonncottrell

Have a great one! 👋

gif of guy saying aren't ordinary people adorable

And, these days, it's actually giving Excel a run for its money. It's picked up a lot of features and processing power over the years that used to be exclusive to Excel.

But we're here to talk about the basics today.

🧾I'm going to cover:

1. How to create new Google Sheets
2. Intro to Templates
3. Menu and toolbar overview
4. Basic data entry and calculations
5. Basic formatting
6. How to create a table
7. How to sort and filter data
8. Intro to formulas and functions

Video Walkthrough

I've made a video walkthrough of the things we'll be covering in this article. You can check it out below:

How to Create a New Sheet

Spreadsheets can be intimidating even in their most basic form.

Don't be scared, though.👇

To use Google Sheets, you need a free Google account. (If you're using Gmail, you already have this.) Go here to sign up if you don't have one yet.

pic of the Google Sheets homepage

Go ahead and go to sheets.new to create a brand new Google Sheet. It will also prompt you to sign up if you don't have an account yet.

💥This is what you'll see:

pic of a blank spreadsheet

😓Some of you may already have begun perspiring because a spreadsheet looks like an unapproachable blank slate reserved for data analysts, financial gurus, and overly ambitious content creators.

gif of man stressing out

💪Fear not.

A spreadsheet, and particularly a Google Sheet, is ripe with possibilities for the average person.

You can use them to enhance productivity after learning only a few basic things.

📊A spreadsheet is a big grid made up of columns labeled with letters and rows labeled with numbers. Each of the rectangles of the grid are called a cell, and the active cell is the one with the blue outline.

If you start typing, whatever you type will appear in the active cell.

The cells can contain numbers, words, formulas, dates, pretty much anything...

pic of spreadsheet cell

Google Sheets Templates

Google has supplied us with a respectable amount of templates to get started with.

I will not be covering these in any detail because it's important to get the basics down first. I just want you to be aware of them if you need a starting point after you've gotten comfortable with Sheets.

You can look through the template gallery here.

pic of Google Sheets templates

Menu and Toolbar Overview

pic of Google Sheets menu and toolbar

You will likely be familiar with the menu and toolbar setup. As with most modern applications, they are at the top of the page. The menu has many familiar options like File, Edit, View, Insert, and so on. And the toolbar below it consists of mostly icons related to formatting and text options.

The File menu has options to share, download, copy, import, rename and other such things related to the whole spreadsheet.

pic of file menu

Edit and View have familiar options regarding copy/paste and choosing different levels of visibility for your spreadsheet.

Insert gives us a host of options of things to import into our sheet like charts, pivot tables, checkboxes, emojis, dropdown lists, and many more.

pic of insert menu

🎨Format contains many options for formatting our sheet. We can add color, borders, tables styles, and more from here.

The Data menu has a lot of spreadsheet specific functions. It contains shortcuts to sort and filter data, to protect different ranges of cells, to group ranges together by naming them, data validation, and advanced items like connecting data sources.

pic of the Data menu in Google Sheets

Tools and Extensions will be lesser used menus, at least in the beginning. But some really exciting stuff is possible by leveraging the power of Google Apps Script through the Extensions menu. This lets us write programs in a language similar to JavaScript all while in a spreadsheet.

But, that's for later – or check out some of my other videos and articles to get a taste of Apps Script.

Basic Data Entry and Calculations

What is data? According to my Google search, data are "facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis."

Spreadsheets thrive on data. Yes, think numbers, dates, percentages...things that are easily calculable.

In Google Sheets, we can enter in some data. Say, a list of names, dollar amounts, and dates.

pic of some data

Now, we have a simple list of data. Because it's small, we can scan it and analyze it ourselves pretty easily.

1. We can see that it's ordered by date
2. We can see that Paul either has or owes the most
3. We can see that Sara either has or owes the least

But imagine this is a list of thousands of records (each row of an amount, a name, and a date can be referred to as one record).

Suddenly it gets a lot harder to analyze or make sense of the data.

Then add a dozen or a hundred more columns of data for each record. It becomes virtually impossible for a human to draw anything meaningful from the data without the help of a spreadsheet or computer program.

Next, we'll see how some organization and simple spreadsheet operations can help us draw insights from our data.👇

gif of woman saying this is so easy

Basic Formatting

Highlight the table. You can do this by clicking and dragging across the whole range of cells. Now, you should have an active range instead of an active cell:

pic of Google Sheets table

Take a moment and click through some of the formatting options on the toolbar. I've changed the text, the font size, and then made bold the first header row.

I've also highlighted only the dollar amounts, and changed their format to currency instead of just a number.

pic of Google Sheets formatting

Already, the information is a little more readable. In the next steps we will go further.👇

gif of Alice falling down rabbit hole

How to Create a Table in Sheets

Alas, we don't (yet) have a swift shortcut like Excel does to make a table. But if we highlight our data again, and select Format -> Alternating Colors from the toolbar, we can create table formatting for enhanced readability.

pic of Alternating Colors table style in Google Sheets

Now, we have banded rows of alternating colors. This becomes very useful in large data sets, but is equally pleasing in our small example. Once satisfied with your color selections, click done.

Now, if we add rows of data to the bottom of our table, Google Sheets is smart enough to know that we probably want to extend the table downward. It will extend the alternating color formatting as we add two more lines:

pic of extended Google Sheets table

How to Sort Data with a Filter in Sheets

Tables are useful because, with some small steps, we can sort and filter data in ways that make it easier to draw conclusions or extract meaning from our data.

Click anywhere in the range of data, and select Data -> Create a filter from the Menu bar.

pic of creating a filter in Google Sheets

Again, Google Sheets knows to create a filter for the entire data set, and you can see two things visually represented:

1. The rows and columns of the data set are now given a highlight color to show that a filter has been applied.
2. To the right of each header label, there are three horizontal lines that look like an upside-down pyramid. These are the filters.

pic of filter on a Google Sheets table

From here, we can both sort and/or filter our data. If we sort, for instance, Z -> A, we can display each row from highest to lowest dollar amount.

sorted table

If we click the data column's pyramid, we can see that for filtering options, we can either filter by condition or by value.

pic of filtering options in Google Sheets

Filtering by values lets us toggle on or off certain dates. Filtering by condition allows for all sorts of options. We can choose dates that are before or after certain dates.

pic of filter options in Google Sheets

Or we can select "Is between" and then write in a period of dates we want to filter for.

pic of filter options in Google Sheets

This becomes immensely helpful to narrow down a field of results for analysis. Now we can focus on only the subset of filtered results.

Intro to Formulas and Functions

The final piece we'll touch on is the ability to write formulas and use functions.

Formulas in Google Sheets

Formulas are instructions we manually type into a cell to manipulate data. If we wanted to add the values in cells A16 and A17, we could write a formula that did this like so: =A16+A17.

pic of a formula in Google Sheets

We can do basic math very easily like this, but there's an even better way to do this by using functions.

Functions in Google Sheets

Functions are built-in formulas that we use by typing their name. Again, we start out by typing the equals sign, but then we type the name of the function, in this case SUM: =SUM(A16:A17).

When we begin typing a function, a tooltip will pop up giving us options for the different functions available. You can hit the TAB key to select a function, click one from the list, or complete the spelling of the function and type an open parentheses to select a function.

pic of available functions in Google Sheets

Once selected, the tooltip will display helper text about that function in case we need an explanation of what it does and/or the variables it needs:

pic of the SUM function in Google Sheets

These are straightforward examples of adding numbers, but there are over 400 built-in functions that range greatly in complexity.

What's Next?

As you've probably figured out, this barely scratches the surface of Google Sheets. Once you're comfortable with the basics, it's time to dive deeper and use Sheets to solve some problems of your own.

Check out the templates I've linked above for inspiration, spin up a personal finance tracker, make a workout calendar, track stock prices, build a cost of goods sheet for a small business, build an amortization sheet to see if you can afford a house, track your time with a project management sheet...the possibilities are vast.

🔗Check out my YouTube channel and newsletter for more Sheets content and projects.

🔗Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Hope you have a great one!

gif of Gosling waving bye

We will create two custom formulas, GPT_SUMMARY and GPT_SIMPLIFY. You can use GPT_SUMMARY to summarize a large passage or text into a few bullet points for easy reading. And you can use GPT_SIMPLIFY to simplify English into easy-to-read English.

We will also create menus with access to functions that perform the same tasks as formulas. We will then discuss the pros and cons of using formulas versus menus.

By the end of this tutorial, you will understand how to use ChatGPT in Google Sheets with Google Apps Script. You will also be able to modify the formulas and menus to meet your own needs, such as creating CVs, social media posts, or cover letters.

You can find the source code for this project in this GitHub repo.

If you want to follow along with a video version of this article, here you go:

Pre-requisites

This tutorial is not meant for beginners in Apps Script or JavaScript. I will not be explaining every method or classes used in the code. This is also not a tutorial on how to use and optimize ChatGPT – instead we'll focus on how to integrate GPT in Google Sheets.

Who is this tutorial for?

This tutorial is for intermediate to advanced users who have a basic understanding of Apps Script and JavaScript. If you are new to either of these, I recommend that you start with a beginner tutorial before attempting this one.

Step 1 – Get the ChatGPT API Key

Get ChatGpt API Key

First, if you don't already have an account with OpenAI, you'll need to create one. Once you have an account, you can create a new API key by going to the API keys section under the User tab.

Click the Create new secret key button and copy the key after it has been created. You will not be able to see this API key again, so be sure to copy it somewhere safe.

Step 2 – Fetch the Data From the ChatGpt API with Apps Script

Spreadsheet Sample

I have named my spreadsheet GPT_Integration with three columns: Passage, Simplified Passage, and Summarized Text.

Let's open the app script for this spreadsheet, rename it to GPT_integration, and also rename the existing file to utils.gs. We'll create a function called fetchData here.

const CHAT_GPT_API_KEY = "paste your API key here";
const BASE_URL = "https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions";


function fetchData(systemContent, userContent) {
  try {
    const headers = {
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
      "Authorization": `Bearer ${CHAT_GPT_API_KEY}`
    };

    const options = {
      headers,
      method: "GET",
      muteHttpExceptions: true,
      payload: JSON.stringify({
        "model": "gpt-3.5-turbo",
        "messages": [{
          "role": "system",
          "content": systemContent,
        },
        {
          "role": "user",
          "content": userContent
        },
        ],
        "temperature": 0.7
      })
    };

    const response = JSON.parse(UrlFetchApp.fetch(BASE_URL, options));
    //console.log(response);
    //console.log(response.choices[0].message.content)
    return response.choices[0].message.content;
  } catch (e) {
    console.log(e)
    SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().toast("Some Error Occured Please check your formula or try again later.");
    return "Some Error Occured Please check your formula or try again later.";
  }
}

Here are some key points to notice in the code above:

1. Paste the API key that you created earlier inside the quotes.
2. We will be using the Chat Completions API. You can find more details about it here.
3. ChatGPT models have different roles, such as system, user, and assistant.
4. The systemContent parameter is where you provide roleplay for the GPT system. For example, you could say "You're an expert algebra teacher" or "You're an expert CV writer".
5. The userContent parameter is where you provide tasks to perform for the model. In our case, we will provide long passages from the spreadsheet to summarize and simplify.
6. We will be using the GPT 3.5 turbo model.
7. We are muting HTTPExceptions so that we can use our own error message in the catch block.
8. The error string is useful when we face errors such as Rate Limit Exceed.

We're returning the content from the response object of GPT that'll be later on handled by our formulas.

The response object from ChatGPT has following structure:

{
  "id": "chatcmpl-123",
  "object": "chat.completion",
  "created": 1677652288,
  "choices": [{
    "index": 0,
    "message": {
      "role": "assistant",
      "content": "\n\nHello there, how may I assist you today?",
    },
    "finish_reason": "stop"
  }],
  "usage": {
    "prompt_tokens": 9,
    "completion_tokens": 12,
    "total_tokens": 21
  }
}

Read more on how to use URLFetchApp from here.

Step 3 – Integrate ChatGpt as a Sheets Formula

GPT SIMPLIFY Formula

Again, for the custom formula, we'll create a new file named formula and then we will create a function named GPT_SIMPLIFY.

/**
 * Simplifies the given paragraph in layman's term.
 * @param {String} input The value to simplify.
 * @return Simplified Text.
 * @customfunction
 */
function GPT_SIMPLIFY(input) {
  console.log(input)
  const systemContent = "Simplify the given text in layman's term. Remember reader is not an expert in english.";
  return Array.isArray(input) ?
    input.flat().map(text => fetchData(systemContent, text)) :
    fetchData(systemContent, input);

}

1. The GPT_SIMPLIFY formula simplifies whatever text is provided as input. The input to this function is data that is coming from the spreadsheet. When you select a range, a cell, or multiple cells, the data in the range will be automatically provided by the spreadsheet to this formula.
2. The systemContent is defined to be passed as the first parameter to the fetchData(systemContent,userContent) function.
3. We are checking if the input is an Array because the data passed to this function can either be a nested array or just a string if we select multiple cells or single cell, respectively, in the spreadsheet.

You can read more on custom functions on this page.

Now go ahead and apply this formula in your spreadsheet. I copied some text from a book I'm reading in the first column and applied the formula in the second column named "Simplify Passage", like this =GPT_SIMPLIFY(A2) for the second cell.

_Appilcation of GPTSIMPLIFY Formula

Note: Make sure to refresh the spreadsheet before you apply the formula to sync with the latest changes in the script.

GPT SUMMARIZE

To summarize the formula we'll just copy the simplify function and some other things, as you can see in the code below.

/**
 * Summarzies the given paragraph. It provides from 3-5 bullet points
 *
 * @param {String} input The value to summarize.
 * @return summarize Text.
 * @customfunction
 */
function GPT_SUMMARY(input) {
  console.log(input)
  const systemContent = "Summarize the given text. Provide atleast 3 and atmost 5 bullet points.";
  return Array.isArray(input) ?
    input.flat().map(text => fetchData(systemContent, text)) :
    fetchData(systemContent, input);

}

The main thing to notice here is the different system content.

Note: Since this is not a tutorial on how to use ChatGpt optimally, I provided instructions as the system content instead of role-play, and then just provided data in the user content. You can improvise this by providing roles in system content, and tasks as well as data as two different user roles in our FetchData() function.

GPT Rate Limit Error

For free users, the rate limit to use the API is 3/minute. As such, when you apply these formulas in more than three cells you'll encounter the error. Luckily the execution won't stop because we're returning an error string from fetch data which will be saved into those cells.

API rate limit error

Auto Refresh and Error

Moreover, the auto-refresh feature of the formula can force the re-application of the formula on cells that already have satisfying values whenever source cells are updated, in our case cells in column "A".

When we add a rate limit on top of auto-refresh it can cause a conundrum. You can technically make changes in custom functions to accommodate such circumstances but, I like to keep formulas light and efficient. So, I recommend we instead create custom menus and apply these functions manually.

Step 4 – Integrate GPT Chat API in Spreadsheet Menu Functions

GPT Simplify Menu

First, let's create another file named menu. Then we'll create the gptSimplifyMenu function which will be an alternative to the GPT_SIMPLIFY formula.

/**
 * Simplifies the given paragraph in layman's term.
 * @customfunction
 */
function gptSimplifyMenu() {
  try {
    // get sheets and data
    const ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
    const data = ss.getDataRange().getValues();
    const lastRow = data.length;
    const lastCol = data[0].length;

    // define gpt's role play
    const systemContent = "Simplify the given text in layman's term. Remember reader is not an expert in english.";


    for (let i = 1; i < data.length; i++) {
      // only simplify if not already simplified or error occured previously
      if (data[i][1] === "" || data[i][1] === "Some Error Occured Please check your formula or try again later.") {
        data[i][1] = fetchData(systemContent, data[i][0]);
        console.log(data[i][1]);

      }
    }

    ss.getRange(1, 1, lastRow, lastCol).setValues(data);
  } catch (e) {
    console.log(e)
    SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().toast("Some Error Occured Please check your formula or try again later.");

  }
}

Key points that are different to understand in this code are:

1. We're hardcoding the data sources, as such data[i][1], which refers to the second column (that is "Simplified Passage") as shown in the spreadsheet image above. This means that if you're using some other columns to save data from ChatGPT to, then you'll have to make changes according to it.
2. We only fetch data when the target cell is empty or contains an error message. This helps to avoid unnecessary API calls.

Add a Custom Function as a Spreadsheet Menu

The function is ready to be tested, but it still will not appear in the spreadsheet. To do so, we'll need to provide the following instructions.

/**
 * Menu creates menu UI in spreadsheet.
 */
function createCustomMenu() {
   // define menu ui 
  let menu = SpreadsheetApp.getUi().createMenu("GPT Functions");
   // add function to the menu
   menu.addItem("GPT SIMPLIFY", "gptSimplifyMenu");
   // add menu to the spreadsheet ui
  menu.addToUi();
}

/**
 * OnOpen trigger that creates menu
 * @param {Dictionary} e
 */
function onOpen(e) {
  createCustomMenu();
}

In createCustomMenu():

1. We define menu with SpreadsheetApp.getUi().createMenu("GPT Functions") as GPT Functions the title appearing in the spreadsheet tab.
2. We add a function to the menu with the menu.addItem("GPT SIMPLIFY", "gptSimplifyMenu"), where the first parameter is the title for display and the second is the function to call when pressed.
3. Add the menu to the UI with menu.addToUi().

The onOpen trigger runs automatically whenever the document the script is attached to reloads and as such will add a menu to the spreadsheet as shown in the image below.

Go ahead and try the formula – it'll only be applied if the cell is either empty or prefilled with an error message.

GPT Summarize Menu

We'll make some minor changes after copying the simplify function as shown below:

/**
 * Summarzies the given paragraph. It provides from 3-5 bullet points
 * @customfunction
 */
function gptSummaryMenu() {
  try {
    // get sheets and data
    const ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
    const data = ss.getDataRange().getValues();
    const lastRow = data.length;
    const lastCol = data[0].length;

    // define gpt's role play
    const systemContent = "Summarize the given text. Provide atleast 3 and atmost 5 bullet points.";


    for (let i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
      console.log(`Inside gptSummaryMenu() for loop`)

      if (i == 0) continue;
      // only summarize if not already summarized or error occured previously
      if (data[i][2] === "" || data[i][2] === "Some Error Occured Please check your formula or try again later.") {
        data[i][2] = fetchData(systemContent, data[i][0]);
        console.log(data[i][2]);
      }
    }

    ss.getRange(1, 1, lastRow, lastCol).setValues(data);
  } catch (e) {
    console.log(e)
    SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().toast("Some Error Occured Please check your formula or try again later.");
  }
}

1. The system role has been changed to address summary instruction.
2. The target column to save data is now the third column.
3. The doc string has been adjusted as well.

As for adding this function to the menu I'll leave it to you.

Tips to Modify the Code

All you need to make your own formula like =GPT_COVER_LETTER_CREATOR() are the following modifications:

To FetchData

You can change System Content Description should to address your needs, like "You write an expert cover letter for software developers".

Add one more instruction in the messages array:

// from this 
[{
          "role": "system",
          "content": systemContent,
        },
        {
          "role": "user",
          "content": userContent
        },
        ], 

// to 
[{
          "role": "system",
          "content": "You write an expert cover letter for software developers",
        },
        {
          "role": "user",
          "content": "Write me a cover letter for this given job advertisement"
        },
        {
          "role": "user",
          "content": userContent // this is job ad from spreadsheet
        },
        ],

You can also add another list item to include your skills and experiences.

Other Functions

Just make sure that your source cell/columns and target cell/columns are accurately indexed (for instance, if you're not using the first column as the source cell and the second to save the data).

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to use Google Apps Script to fetch ChatGPT responses from the API and save them into spreadsheets using custom formulas and custom menus.

We started by creating a new Google Apps Script project and adding the ChatGPT API. Then, we wrote a script that would fetch a ChatGPT response for a given prompt. We saved the response using a custom formula into a spreadsheet cell.

We also created a custom menu item that would allow us to fetch a ChatGPT response from any cell in the spreadsheet. This menu item would open a button to fetch the response.

The final step was to share the spreadsheet with others so that they could use the custom formulas and menus to fetch ChatGPT responses.

I hope you enjoyed this article and found it helpful. If you have any questions, just let me know.

I am Nibesh Khadka, Freelancer specializing in automating Google products with Apps Script. Contact me if you need my services at me@nibeshkhadka.com.

Coefficient produced a Google sheets extension with the ability to use OpenAI's GPT models from within a spreadsheet. It’s called GPT Copilot and it’s available to try for free.

screenshot of Coefficient's GPT in Sheets page

I have been putting off looking into this tool for quite some time, though I've been following Coefficient's Google Sheets work for a while now.

To be honest, I'd gotten a little tired of all the AI talk and was wary of yet another effort in that realm. Do I really need to use AI in spreadsheets?

🤷Yes and no.

Video Example

I made a quick video walking through a handful of the GPTx functions, and I'll detail all of them in the article below. If you have a sec, check out the 2.5 min video and give it a 👍.

The extension is pretty cool.

AI is not some thing that is going to do all of my work for me. But it is a pretty powerful tool with which I can do work faster, more efficiently, and in some cases get some unique inspiration from.

gif of ted lasso saying, smells like potential

GPT Copilot Functions

In the GPT Copilot extension on Google Sheets, we are given a list of several built-in GPTX functions we can now use directly in the sheet itself.

Here is a document with all the functions listed out, and we'll go through each below.

And here's the spreadsheet I used for all my samples and the video.

The first function, =GPTX(prompt) simply lets us generate text using Open AI's GPT model.

I used this to generate a subject line for an email below. This generic GPTX function can be used to query ChatAI's model for anything you can think of:

Screenshot of GPTX() function

Then we get **=GPTX_LIST(prompt)** which lets us generate a list of values in the same way.

This is similar to the first example, but the list of items will appear in separate cells so it's handy if you want...say, the top 10 video games by sales in Korea:

_Screenshot of GPTXLIST() function

**=GPTX_EDIT(text,[task])** was useful as I went through and created email body messages based on a prompt that I fed into the function. So it lets us perform a task or transformation on an input text.

_screenshot of GPTXEDIT function

**GPTX_MAP(search_keys, inputs)** performs a fuzzy search, given a list of search keys in the list of input values, and then outputs the most similar search for each input value.

If we have a list of games and platform companies, it can map the company values to the correct game:

_Screenshot of GPTXMAP()

**GPTX_FILL(text, [task])** fills in missing information in the table based on example rows.

This will let you feed it some example data and have GPTX fill in the rest:

_Screenshot of GPTXFILL

**GPTX_TABLE(prompt, [header_row])** generates a table of values. This one was particularly cool because you can give it a real query to get data from, or have it fill out a table with dummy data.

Here we can pull in some population info on the top 5 cities in Tennessee: 😀

_Screenshot of GPTXTABLE()

**GPTX_FORMAT(text, language)** converts input values into the specified format.

**GPTX_TAG(text, tags)** does what it sounds like: it applies one or more tags matching a piece text.

If you have a list of movies, and a list of genres, you can tag them here. Interestingly:

1. GPT doesn't seem to have a sense of humor as it didn't classify Waterworld as a flop.
2. It also won't blindly fill in genres that are missing from the list (Goldeneye and Seven)

_Screenshot of GPTXTAG()

Another cautionary tale, though...when I added crime to see if it would fill in Seven's blank, it actually came back with different answers on some of the others...and left off Casper and Jumanji this time. So, while nothing is really tagged incorrectly, it does have varying results.

In this case, it does behave like a human, in a way. You'll get different people answering this type of tagging question in different ways too. 🤷‍♂️

**GPTX_CLASSIFY(text, labels)**, in the same way, classifies text given a set of labels or categories.

**GPTX_EXTRACT(text, info_to_extract)** extracts the desired information from the input text. So if you have an address in a cell, it can extract the city name from the address.

Caution though; I encountered several instances while writing these GPTX functions where I got #ERROR!s and had to refresh the page, close it and reopen, or simply wait a while...

**GPTX_SUMMARIZE(text, language)** summarizes the input text according to the given format.

I tried to be clever here. I pasted the first chapter of The Great Gatsby into a cell. Pretty quickly got a "too large" error 😂)

_screenshot of GPTXSummarize error

But! Reducing down to the first 726 words was sufficient to have it actually summarize the beginning of this awesome novel:

_Screenshot of GPTXSUMMARIZE() summarizing the start of The Great Gatsby

**GPTX_TRANSLATE(text, language)** translates the input text into the specified language.

This one's straightfoward and not incredibly useful for my spreadsheets...but nonetheless, it's pretty neat:

_Screenshot of GPTXTRANSLATE()

**GPTX_CONVERT(text, format)** converts the input text into the specified structured format.

**GPTX_CODE(task, language)**generates code in a specified language, which performs the specified task.

GPTX_CODE() was really neat. I also see the most chances for problems here because novices will be tempted to blindly use code not knowing how or if it works.

This seems most beneficial as a helper for when I know how the code should work, but can prompt for the basic skeleton instead of needing to search for methods on my own.

Limits to GPT Copilot

Are there limits to the number of prompts you can feed these functions? Yes. Of course there are. 😆

To stay free, you get 10,000 executions. Monthly plans start at 100,000 executions per month.

screenshot from the Coefficient GPT CopilotFAQ

What I Think

I walk through some real basic stuff that I could have generated on my own in the example video that I encourage you to watch. But I do see the potential for this to be a very helpful tool as the ecosystem matures.

Insofar as dummy data is concerned, it is really helpful to just generate stuff in a spreadsheet quickly.

And it works great to fill in the blanks where you previously might do a little bit more manual labor, extracting values, formatting things, classifying things, and so on.

In addition to these built-in functions, the Coefficient add-on also contains a pivot builder, a formula builder, and a chart builder tool.

screenshot of Coefficient's extension

These allow you to feed a prompt into the extension based on the data in your spreadsheet, and it will generate either a pivot table, a formula, or a chart.

These are kind of crutches for doing some pretty basic operations in Google Sheets. But they do have an interesting utility and are pretty reliable when you give well-written prompts to them.

Wrapping Up

🤔 AI tools can be a big time sink. It's pretty easy to spend more time getting mediocre results from them than it would have taken to do things manually.

But, that's part of the learning curve for any toolkit. Upfront investments can certainly pay off in the long run. I'll keep using these tools to hopefully make better spreadsheets more efficiently.

❓What do you think? Is this another example of over-engineering simple things? Or is it the next big thing in Google Sheets?

Come join the conversation on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@eamonncottrell?sub_confirmation=1

Or my LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamonncottrell/

Have a great one! 👋

I bet I've used the CTRL + F shortcut more than any other keyboard shortcut in my life. CTRL + Z probably comes close, but I use CTRL + F to find things...

💥ALL 💥

💥💥THE 💥💥

💥💥💥TIME 💥💥💥

gif of man saying we need more

And yes, it'll work just fine in a Google Sheet to find information.

But sometimes I want to display a range of results based on a word I'm searching for. To do that, we'll create a dynamic search bar in our Google Sheet.

You can also follow along in this walkthrough video:

The Search Bar

Our search bar is nothing more than a cell or range of cells. In the example below, it starts in J2.

Screenshot of a search bar on Google Sheets

By adding a =QUERY() function in J5 we can look at whatever is typed into J2 (the red circle) and display the search results below it (the blue rectangle).

In my example, I'm searching through a bunch of personal finance transactions (with randomized amounts😀) that are in columns A:F.

Screenshot of finance data on Google Sheets

The Query Function

The =QUERY() function looks in the Transactions range (which is that A3:F range where all the transactions live).

And it grabs all the info in either column B or column D that CONTAINS what we type in J2.

So it searches through all our transaction descriptions in column B and categories in column D for whatever we type in J2. The LOWER command turns the info in B and D into lowercase. This makes it easier to search because the CONTAINS command is case-sensitive.

=QUERY(Transactions, 
       "SELECT A,B,C,D,E WHERE LOWER(B) CONTAINS '"&J2&"' OR LOWER(D) CONTAINS '"&J2&"'")

• the only caveat is that if you type in uppercase in the search bar, it won't work properly.

The Filter Function

By using the =FILTER() function in combination with the =SEARCH() function, we can do the same thing in a little bit shorter formula and without having to worry about case sensitivity.

=IF(ISBLANK(J2),"",FILTER(Transactions,SEARCH(J2,B3:B225)))

The tradeoff here is that when we want to add multiple conditions like we did in the =QUERY() statement, it breaks down. Both =FIND() and =SEARCH() did not work properly when trying to use them more than once inside the =FILTER().

I was able to find a work around by using the plus operator and constructing the formula in this way:

=IF(ISBLANK(J2),"",FILTER(Transactions,(B3:B225=J2)+(D3:D225=J2)))

Unfortunately when you filter in this way, partial matches are not included in the search results.

In the case of Query, partial answers are always returned.

So, when we enter "hom" all the lines with "home" in it would be returned. When using multiple conditions with filter, nothing would return unless you entered the whole word "home".

What About XLOOKUP?

The issue with XLOOKUP is twofold. One, it doesn't handle partial matches well unless you add wildcard characters:

=XLOOKUP("*"&J2&"*",B3:B225,A3:F225,,2)

This increases complexity but still works.

The more important difference is that it will only return one result so it's not going to work at all for us for this use case.

The Winner is Query

Query takes the prize simply because it doesn't need further manipulation to add multiple conditions, and it will return all the values that meet our search criteria.

It may take you a minute to wrap your head around the syntax, but it's just as powerful and more versatile than Filter in the long haul.

The only thing to make sure to remember is case sensitivity. If you're using the LOWER command in your query, don't use any uppercase search letters.

Make it Neat

In the full formula, I've added an =IF() function at the start to handle the blank search bar. We want to return nothing in that case:

=IF(ISBLANK(J2),"", QUERY(Transactions "SELECT A,B,C,D,E WHERE LOWER(B) CONTAINS '"&J2&"' OR LOWER(D) CONTAINS '"&J2&"'")

Screenshot of a blank search bar in Google Sheets

Follow Along

Come follow me over on YouTube as I make tutorials each week.

Sign up here to get my newsletter in your email each week.

Eamonn's Sheets | Coding | Education logo

Data validation is a feature in Excel used in restricting data entry in specific cells. It can also prompt the user to enter valid data into the cells based on the rules and restrictions provided by the creator of the Excel worksheet.

When setting up a workbook, you might want to make sure users input a specific type of data. For example, you might want to allow only dates, numbers, or letters in a specific range to be imputed in a cell. This is crucial if you want to eliminate mistakes as much as possible in your data.

Types of Data Validation Rules in Excel

Here are a few data validation rules you can set up in Excel:

• Only allow text or numeric values in a cell.
• Only allow numbers within a specific range.
• Display a warning message when a user inputs the wrong data.
• Only allow dates and times outside a given range.
• Validation rule based on criteria from another cell.

Steps to Create Data Validation Rules in Excel.

To create a data validation rule in Excel, do the following:

First, select the row, column, or specific cell you want to apply a data validation rule to.

Then open the data pane and click on the data validation. Alternatively, you can go directly to the data validation dialogue box by pressing the following keys on your keyboard separately. ALT > D > L. Do not hold the keys together, press the keys separately and you will be taken to the dialogue box as well.

Create the data validation based on what data you want to be supplied in the cell or row.

You can supply the following validation criteria:

Allow: Make a rule based on the type of data you want to allow. You can choose one from the drop-down menu. You can uncheck the “Ignore blank” button if you do not want blank spaces.

Data: From the drop-down menu you can choose the criteria and also input the minimum and maximum values you want the user to input.

With the validation criteria set, click OK to close the window or click on the Input Message or Error Alert tab to give the user more information on the data validation rule.

Input message: While this is optional, you can input a message to be displayed when a user clicks on a cell that has a data validation rule defined on it.

Next, give your input message a title, and under the input message, make sure the message you provide is clear to the user. Click on OK to close the dialogue box or navigate to the Error Alert tab.

Then display an error message. This is optional, but it is good practice to display an error message to users when they enter data that is outside the validation rule you set.

There are three types of error alerts:

1. Stop: This is the default and is very strict, as it stops users from entering invalid data. You can only click on “Retry” or “Cancel”

2. Warning: This will only warn the user but is not as strict as the stop warning. A user can ignore the message by clicking “YES” the invalid data will be inputted.

Here’s an example of the warning message a user will get:

3. Information: This is a permissive type of error alert as it only informs the user about invalid data inputted.

If the user clicks OK, the invalid gets inserted into the worksheet. If the user clicks on Cancel, the data gets deleted.

Give a title to the error alert and also provide a message for your users to see. When you’re done, click on OK, and your data validation rule has been set.

Conclusion

Data validation in Excel is one powerful feature you should utilize when creating an Excel spreadsheet.

You can use the data validation feature in Excel to make rules that will ensure the data inputted meets certain criteria or follows predefined rules. Setting a data validation rule helps to maintain data accuracy, consistency, and integrity within your Excel worksheet.

Yes, you can use them for finance dashboards, personal budgets, and project management (and we'll cover these as future topics). But in this article, I'll go through the basics of Apps Script by building a simple and playable Tic Tac Toe gameboard.

Here's the link to the spreadsheet we'll be making if you'd like to check it out while you follow along:

Let's go gif

Video Walkthrough Available

If you'd like to check out a video walkthrough of the Google Sheet, here you go:

Project Setup

Create a new Google Sheet by either going to your Google Drive and selecting NEW -> Google Sheet or by simply typing in sheets.new in the URL bar of your browser.

screenshot of Google Drive

Since this is a gameboard, we are going to give it a little bit of formatting to look good, add data validation and conditional formatting to add functionality to the game, and create useable buttons for our scorecard.

Here's what we'll end up with:

screenshot of Tic Tac Toe Google Sheet

Let's remove gridlines, add borders to the gameboard and the scorecard, and set an alternative font for the board.

To get rid of gridlines, select View -> Show -> Gridlines to uncheck this option.

screenshot of Google Sheets view options

To get a nice square grid with large X's and O's, I set the row height and column width of rows 2 - 4 and columns B - D by highlighting them, right clicking, and selecting the resize options.

screenshot of resizing columns in Google Sheets

I chose 150 pixels for the height and width. You'll need to do these separately – you cannot change both the row height and column width at the same time.

screenshot of resizing columns in Google Sheets

For the font size of the board, select 100, and for the Font, I am using Lexend. You can add additional Google Fonts from the toolbar dropdown:

screenshot of Fonts options in Google Sheets

Add a border to the board and the scorecard areas by highlighting the cells and then selecting the border options from the toolbar.

Click and drag over cells to select the whole range, and hold down the CTRL button to click and drag a second area. You can style these at the same time.

screenshot of border options in Google Sheets

Data Validation

Highlight the gameboard (B2:D4) and select Data -> Data validation from the menu.

This allows us to select Dropdown as the Criteria and add X and O as the two options to select.

Then click Advanced options and select Reject the input if the data is invalid, and plain text for the display style. This will keep the dropdown chips and handles from cluttering the gameboard.

screenshot of Data validation menu in Google Sheets

Conditional Formatting

We'll use conditional formatting for our gameboard also. We need to check for all the winning conditions, and if one of the players gets three in a row, we will highlight those cells.

Keeping the gameboard highlighted, select Format -> Conditional formatting.

screenshot of Format window in Google Sheets

There are eight conditions we'll check for three-in-a-row: going across x3, going down x3, and diagonal x2.

But we only need to write four formulas (two for the diagonals, one for across, and one for down) since we can use dollar ($) signs to drag the formula down and across for those.

For the down three-in-a-row:

//Apply to range B2:D2 
=AND($B2=$C2,$B2=$D2,ISTEXT($B2))

For the across three-in-a-row:

//Apply to range B2:D2
=AND(B$2=B$3,B$2=B$4,ISTEXT(B$3))

For the diagonals we have to define them separately:

//Apply to range B2, C3, D4 
=AND($B$2=$C$3,$B$2=$D$4,ISTEXT($B$2))

//Apply to range B4, C3, D2 
=AND($B$4=$C$3,$B$4=$D$2,ISTEXT($B$4))

We test for equality of each cell and whether there is anything in the cell with the =ISTEXT() function. By wrapping each item in an =AND() function, we'll only apply the formatting if all conditions are met.

I selected a green background for the conditional formatting.

screenshot of conditional formatting window

Apps Script

Now for the scorecard logic. Let's open Apps Script by selecting Extensions -> Apps Script from the menu:

screenshot of Apps Script menu

We'll write four functions to handle our logic:

1. xScore() will increment X's score in the scorecard
2. oScore() will increment O's score in the scorecard
3. clearBoard() will clear the board but keep the scores
4. reset() will clear the board and set the scores back to zero

To make things more legible, let's set a few named ranges.

Highlight the gameboard again and select Data -> Named ranges. Give this range a name of Board. Do the same for cells G4 and H4 for xScore and oScore, respectively.

Now for the scores, we'll have the exact same function for each using only the two different ranges: xScore for X and oScore for O. Here's how those will look using the xScore as an example:

xScore() & oScore():

function xScore() {
    var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive(); 
    var xScore = sheet.getRangeByName('xScore').getValue();
    sheet.getRangeByName('xScore').setValue(xScore+1); clearBoard();
}

• Line 1: This sets a variable (we'll do this in each function) for the active spreadsheet.
• Line 2: This sets a variable for xScore as the value in the named range xScore (cell G4)
• Line 3: This sets a new value for the xScore cell as whatever it was plus 1.
• Line 4: This runs the clearBoard() function which we'll write next...

clearBoard():

This will simply clear the gameboard but leave the score board untouched.

function clearBoard() {
    let sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
    let board = sheet.getRangeByName('Board');
    board.clearContent(); 
}

• Line 1: Our sheet variable again.
• Line 2: Our board variable. This is grabbing the range B2:D4 which we named 'Board'
• Line3: This built-in clearContent() method simply clears everything in those cells. Pretty simple.

reset():

Now we need a function to set the score board and gameboard back to their original states.

function reset() {
    let sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive(); 
    sheet.getRangeByName('xScore').setValue(0);
    sheet.getRangeByName('oScore').setValue(0); clearBoard(); 
}

• Line 1: our active sheet
• Line 2: we grab our xScore range and set its value to 0.
• Line 3: we do the same for our oScore
• Line 4: we run the reset function to handle the gameboard.

And that's it! Now we can run any of these functions from within the Apps Script editor and see that they work.

screenshot of running code within Apps Script editor

How to Create Buttons

It would be a lot nicer to have buttons in our actual spreadsheet to be able to run the functions.

To do this, we'll draw a button and then assign a script to it.

Select Insert -> Drawing from the menu.

Screenshot of Insert menu in Google Sheets

You can draw anything you'd like, but I chose the basic rounded rectangle.

Screenshot of shapes in Google Sheets drawings menu

Double click in the shape to add text, and resize, recolor, restyle as needed.

Screenshot of button in Google Sheets

Once you've created your button, click Save and Close. Then resize and position it where you'd like it in the Google Sheet. I've put mine right under the scorecard, and I made one for each score as well as a reset button.

Finally, to make the button work, click the three little dots at the top right of the button and select assign script. Then type in the name of the script (without the parentheses).

Screenshot of assigning a script to a button in Google Sheets

Now, all you've got to do is click one of the buttons and the assigned script will run 🔥.

Two notes:

1. The first time you run a script, there will be a pop-up dialog box asking you to accept the security allowances. It's a safety net to make sure you know you're running the code that's written in Apps Script, and to examine it if you didn't write it. You'll need to click through those and accept the risk to allow it to run.
2. If you need to move a button after assigning the script, you may get frustrated when clicking it doesn't bring up the three dots for the menu and only runs the script. To get around this and allow for movement and the three dot menu, right click the button.

Wrapping Up

I hope this has been helpful for you!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel here for more content like this.

Have a great one!

In this Apps Script tutorial, we'll build a paint by numbers spreadsheet using conditional formatting and a script that "paints" a blank spreadsheet.

You'll learn how to:

1. Import data
2. Apply proper data visualization formatting to it
3. Code a couple of Apps Script functions to make it interactive.

Let's do it 🎨

Tenacious D rocking out

Video Walkthrough

Yes, I've got a full walkthrough for you. Pull this up as you read to reference and follow along 👇

Demo sheet with Pikachu: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Zu0B0dE_N4UrgAAzlWKqbpmz2TL_qr9GYWS451O7UL0/edit#gid=0

Demo sheet with Volcano: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lOVseXtpB6xWxhrmZr1LfImI75TBDbof6mkFzz0ck4/edit#gid=0

You can make an editable copy of either of these by selecting File -> Make a copy.

Project Setup

Everything we're doing today is built on some simple formatting. We are going to have cells turn certain colors based on the number inside them.

See the pic below where all the blue cells have the number 15 in them. By setting the color of the font and the background to blue, we can create the effect of the cells being a solid color.

Picture of Pikachu pixel artwork

We can make our own number grid, but there are a ton available. I print these for my kids to color, and we can import them to our spreadsheet with a couple clicks.

Here's the volcano grid I used in the walkthrough video.

Picture of volcano color by number grid

When I first recorded the walkthrough video, I was unable to copy and paste from the PDF. When I did, it pasted every number in one cell.

Instead, by opening in Microsoft Word first and then copying and pasting from there, I was able to bring the number grid into the Google Sheet.

Since then, I've also found that when copying and pasting from the PDF, sometimes it will bring the numbers in to the first cell in each row:

picture of Google Sheets number grid

This doesn't work, either, because we need each number in its own cell. But, by applying the =SPLIT() function, we can achieve this easily.

=SPLIT(A1," ") will split each value in the cell by the empty spaces. So, all the numbers are pulled out into their own cells in the row.

Picture of Split function in Google Sheets

Once all the numbers are in individual cells, apply some formatting to the spreadsheet so that every cell is a square. Resize as big or as small as you'd like. I chose a row and column height of 30px.

To do this, select the column headers by clicking and dragging from A all the way to the end of the columns. Right click anywhere in the range, and select Resize columns.

Picture of resizing columns in Google Sheets

Do the same for the rows, specifying 30px for each.

Picture of resizing rows in Google Sheets

Turn off the gridlines by selecting View -> Show -> Gridlines.

Picture of View options in Google Sheets

Conditional Formatting

Select the entire range where all the numbers are and then click Format -> Conditional formatting.

Click Add new rule and under Format rules, select Is equal to from the dropdown menu.

Picture of conditional formatting in Google Sheets

Under Formatting style, follow the color key from the coloring page you selected and adjust the font and background colors according to each number.

In our example, all the number 10s need to be blue, so we enter 10 and then have the same blue for both background and font colors:

Picture of color options in Google Sheets

⭐Important Note

Because of the script we're writing and how we're triggering it, you need to alter the HEX code for one of these two numbers. If they are the exact same, it will cause an error later.

So, first enter the same color for both, then open one and select the plus icon in the custom color swatch.

Picture of custom colors in Google Sheets

Manually change one value in the HEX code by one digit. In the example, I changed it from #0b5294 to #0b5394. Visually, it will still look the same. If this is confusing, be sure to check out the walkthrough video at 02:39.

Picture of custom colors in Google Sheets

Do this for each color in your piece of art, and you'll have a gorgeous piece of pixel artwork in your spreadsheet. This alone is rewarding! 😀

Picture of volcano pixel art in Google Sheets

Apps Script Setup

Name the sheet that we're on by double clicking Sheet1 at the bottom. We'll call it "art". Then make a new sheet by clicking the plus icon on the bottom bar. Name it "canvas".

Picture of sheet names in Google Sheets

Setup the canvas in the same way we did at the beginning, only without the conditional formatting. Make everything the same size, remove the gridlines, and add a border around the B2:T21 range that will serve as a frame.

Now, we need to make buttons to toggle in each cell. In Google Sheets, the way to do this is by adding checkboxes to all the cells. Checkboxes will hold either a true or false value, and when we click them, they'll change back and forth.

Select our full range again, and select Data -> Data validation. Change the criteria to Checkbox and under Advanced options select Reject the input.

Picture of data validation rules in Google Sheets

This will give our script something to be triggered by.

Format these checkboxes in the same way we did our conditional formatting: make the background white: #ffffff, and the font color just slightly different: #fffeff. Then, give them a huge font size, like 200. This will allow for us to click anywhere in the cell and not run the risk of clicking just outside the border of the box itself.

Now, let's open our code editor by selecting Extensions -> Apps Script.

Picture of Extensions menu in Google Sheets

Script Logic

We need to copy and paste the formatting of individual cells every time we click the blank cells in our canvas.

To do this, we'll use an onEdit(e) trigger method built into Apps Script.

function onEdit(e) {
  //get current sheet
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();

  // if we're not on the art sheet...
  if(sheet.getName() != "art"){

First, we'll grab the active sheet as a variable. Then, making sure we're not on the "art" sheet, we'll go through the steps to grab and paste the formatting we need...

// get the active cell and it's row, column reference
var activeRange = sheet.getActiveCell();
var row = activeRange.getRow();
var column = activeRange.getColumn();

Within our conditional if statement, we'll make three more variables so that we can grab the position of the cell we're in.

Then we need to go to our "art" sheet and grab the formatting from the corresponding cell.

var artRange = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName("art").getRange(row,column);
// get the background color from the same reference in art sheet
var backgroundColor = artRange.getBackground();
var fontColor = artRange.getFontColor();

We'll make another three variables: one for the artRange which grabs the range from the "art" sheet using the row and column that we're on in the "canvas" sheet. And then two variables for the colors: one for background and one for font.

Now all we need to do is set the "canvas" sheet's cell to the colors we just grabbed. I've also chosen to make it toggle back to a blank white cell if it's already been colored. So we'll use another if statement to handle that:

trueFalse = activeRange.getValue();
if(trueFalse){
      // set activeRange with that backgroundColor
      activeRange.setBackground(backgroundColor);
      activeRange.setFontColor(fontColor);
    }
    else{
      activeRange.setBackground('#ffffff');
      activeRange.setFontColor('#fffeff');
    }

First, we set a trueFalse variable equal to the activeRange's value. This is either true or false depending on the state of the checkbox.

If it's false (the checkbox isn't checked), then we set the background and font colors using the variables we grabbed from our "art" sheet.

Here's the full onEdit(e) code:

function onEdit(e) {
  //get current sheet
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();

  // if we're not on the art sheet...
  if(sheet.getName() != "art"){

    // get the active cell and it's row, column reference
    var activeRange = sheet.getActiveCell();
    var row = activeRange.getRow();
    var column = activeRange.getColumn();

    var artRange = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName("art").getRange(row,column);

    // get the background color from the same reference in art sheet
    var backgroundColor = artRange.getBackground();
    var fontColor = artRange.getFontColor();

    Logger.log(backgroundColor)
    Logger.log(fontColor)

    trueFalse = activeRange.getValue();

    if(trueFalse){
      // set activeRange with that backgroundColor
      activeRange.setBackground(backgroundColor);
      activeRange.setFontColor(fontColor);
    }
    else{
      activeRange.setBackground('#ffffff');
      activeRange.setFontColor('#fffeff');
    }
  }
}

Reset Function

As an added feature, we'll add an actual button to reset the canvas. To do this, we'll make a new function in our Apps Script code editor.

We'll grab the sheet and all the checkboxes as variables. To get the checkboxes, we'll use the getRangebyName() method on our 'canvasArt' range.

Then, Apps Script makes it pretty easy with built in methods. We set the value of all the checkboxes to false, the background color to #ffffff, and the font color to #fffeff.

Here's the full reset() code:

function reset(){
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var checkboxes = sheet.getRangeByName('canvasArt');
  checkboxes.setValue(false);
  checkboxes.setBackground("#ffffff");
  checkboxes.setFontColor("#fffeff");
}

Trigger with Button

To make a button in the spreadsheet, select Insert -> Drawing.

Picture of Insert menu in Google Sheets

Select the rounded rectangle shape and drag it onto the grid.

Picture of Shapes menu in Google Sheets

Double click into the shape to write "CLEAR". Adjust the font and colors as you see fit.

Picture of button drawing in Google Sheets

Click Save and Close and then drag it to re-size and reposition onto your sheet at the bottom of the canvas.

Once you've positioned it, click the three circles in the top right, select Assign script, and type in the name of the script you'd like it to trigger (in our case, reset).

Picture of assigning script to button in Google Sheets

Now, when you click this button, that script will run and clear the whole art canvas.

Conclusion

I hope this has been helpful for you! I had a great time making this, and I have more game-type spreadsheet content coming soon.

Come follow me on YouTube, and say hey over on LinkedIn.

Have a great one! 👋

Our dashboard will have multiple data validation dropdown selections for us to choose ingredients. By using a =Query() function, we'll then display the recipes that contain any combination of the selected ingredients.

Let's go!

gif of man saying, "here we go!"

Final Product

Here's what the finished dashboard will look like. It's not overly complicated, and the tools and techniques we'll use to get the data, clean it, and display it dynamically are quite valuable.

picture of the Zelda dashboard

Here's the source code Google Sheet. Open this up to follow along and double check some of the code as you go through the article

You can make an editable copy of this by selecting File -> Make a Copy.

Walkthrough Video

If you'd like to see a video of me building this from scratch, here is a time-lapse 14min video with me narrating the steps:

Project Setup

The first thing we need is data. In our case, we're going to use the IMPORTHTML() function to get data from IGN. IMPORTHTML() allows us to reference a URL, specify whether to search the URL for "tables" or "lists", and then by providing an index number, import the table or list from the URL.

screenshot of importhtml docs

IGN has a handy recipe cookbook here.

We'll place the URL in a cell in our Google Sheet because after inspecting the page, we see that the recipes are contained within several tables, so we'll need to use multiple import statements.

I've put the URL in D3 and we're ready to import all the tables. In order to do this in one fell swoop, we can use curly brackets. In Google Sheets, curly brackets create arrays.

By wrapping multiple IMPORTHTML() statements in curly brackets, we create an array of all those imports. As a final touch, we can wrap the whole thing in a UNIQUE() function to ensure that no duplicate recipes (or in our case, table headers) are brought over to our data tab.

Here's the code:

```google sheets =UNIQUE({IMPORTHTML(D3,"table",3); IMPORTHTML(D3,"table",4); IMPORTHTML(D3,"table",5); IMPORTHTML(D3,"table",6); IMPORTHTML(D3,"table",7); IMPORTHTML(D3,"table",8); IMPORTHTML(D3,"table",9)})

This gives us the data, but we need to clean it up. Specifically, we need to get rid of the asterisks in the meal titles and the dashes, extras spaces, and line breaks in the ingredient lists.

![Image](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/content/images/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-12-at-7.46.34-PM.png)
_picture of uncleaned imported data_

## How to Clean the Data

For the titles, we'll use the `MID()` and `LEN()` functions.

```google sheets
//For first row of Meal Titles
=MID(A6,2,LEN(A6)-2)

MID() returns a section of the cell's contents starting at one index and ending at another. We want to grab the contents after the first asterisk, so we'll use 2 as the first index. And then we'll use LEN()-2 to find the length of the cell's contents minus 2 for the ending index.

Screenshot of cleaning data in Google Sheet

For the ingredients, we'll first use TRIM(CLEAN()) to remove non-printable characters and extra spaces. Then, we'll use ARRAYFORMULA(TRIM(SPLIT())) to get each remaining ingredient into its own cell.

```google sheets //For first row of Ingredients =ARRAYFORMULA(TRIM(SPLIT(C6,"-")))

![Image](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/content/images/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-12-at-8.15.06-PM.png)
_Screenshot of TRIM, SPLIT and ARRAY FORMULA_

Now that we have our ingredients split into separate cells, let's name some ranges. This will make life easier as we build the dashboard in a moment. 😀

Selecting each column of the ingredients, go to `Data -> named ranges` and name them `Ingredient1`, `Ingredient2`, `Ingredient3`, `Ingredient4`, and `Ingredient5`. 

![Image](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/content/images/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-12-at-8.20.43-PM.png)
_screenshot of named ranges menu_

Also, select the entire cleaned data range: our meal titles and our individual ingredient columns, and name this range `RecipeList`.

![Image](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/content/images/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-12-at-8.24.40-PM.png)
_Screenshot of cleaned full recipe list_

## How to Get All Unique Ingredients

Create a new sheet by clicking the `+` button at the bottom left of the window and name this sheet `Ingredients`.

![Image](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/content/images/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-12-at-8.26.05-PM.png)
_Screenshot of add new sheet button_

We now need all the unique ingredients pulled out into a range which we'll name `allIngredients`.

To do this, we'll use the `UNIQUE()` function and all the ingredient named ranges wrapped in curly brackets.

```appscript
=UNIQUE({Ingredient1;
Ingredient2;
Ingredient3;
Ingredient4;
Ingredient5})

This gives us a unique list of ingredients that we'll use as we build the dropdown menus in our dashboard.

How to Make the Dashboard

Create another new sheet and name it Dashboard. Here's where the fun begins. 🔥

gif of woman saying, fun will now commence.

The first thing we need are some dropdown menus containing all the possible ingredients.

screenshot of dropdown menu

You may either right click in a cell and select Dropdown, or select Data -> Data validation from the Toolbar.

Screenshot of Dropdown option in Google Sheets

Under criteria, select Dropdown (from a range). And in the range, we can input the named range we just created from our Ingredients sheet: =allIngredients.

This will populate all the ingredients beneath the selection. If you'd like, you can even customize the color and appearance options for these. Since there are so many, I left them as default.

Screenshot of data validation rules.

Simply copy and paste this cell two more times and we have our three identical dropdown menus.

Screenshot of 3 dropdown menus

Logic

We want to handle a few different cases in our dashboard. For any selected ingredient or combination of ingredients, we want to query our RecipeList named range for those ingredients and return the full corresponding recipe.

There are eight possible combinations for the dropdown menus being filled out:

1. none
2. all
3. only the first
4. only the second
5. only the third
6. first and second
7. first and third
8. second and third.

We need to feed a query statement with different values depending on which of the above states is true.

Let's make another new sheet and name it Formula to spell out and keep track of this logic.

We need a simple test for TRUE or FALSE for each of the possibilities. And to do this, we'll simply test whether or not each of the dropdown menus are blank or contain text.

Conveniently, Google Sheets has two functions that do exactly that: ISBLANK() and ISTEXT().

We'll do some more range naming to make things more legible and then test for each condition.

I've named the three dropdown menu ranges on the Dashboard Dash9, Dash10 and Dash11.

Here's the code to test for when the first and third dropdown menus are filled out:

```google sheets =IF(AND(ISTEXT(Dash9),ISTEXT(Dash10),ISBLANK(Dash11)),true,false)

![Image](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/content/images/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-12-at-8.44.27-PM.png)
_Screenshot of logic tests_

The `IF` statement returns true or false based on the nested `AND` statement which combines the `ISTEXT` and `ISBLANK` statements for each dropdown menu.

> Stay with me! It's all about to come together! 👊

Now, in order to feed the dropdown menu options to our query statement (which I promise we're about to write!) we need to string it together with bar lines which will function like the `OR` operator in the query.

So...in `A1` of our `Formula` sheet, we'll use an `IFS()` function to display the contents of one or more of the `Dash9`, `Dash10` and `Dash11` ranges. 

To achieve this when there are more than one with values, we use the `&` operator which concatenates the value in the `Dash` cell with a bar line within quotes ("|"). And the result is shown below. 

```google sheets
=IFS(B2,"",
B3,Dash9,
B4,Dash10,
B5,Dash11,
B6,Dash9&"|"&Dash10,
B7,Dash9&"|"&Dash11,
B8,Dash10&"|"&Dash11,
B9,Dash9&"|"&Dash10&"|"&Dash11)

We have our query value built. And it will change dynamically depending on which dropdown menus contain text.

Screenshot of IFS Statement

Query Statement

Now, the hard work is done. Let's plug what we've created into a query statement on the Dashboard to make this all work!

Query will look at a range, in our case the RecipeList named range with all our meal names and ingredients, and return everything that matches the criteria we feed it.

We want to return a full recipe when our Query named range is matched to an ingredient in any of the five ingredient named ranges.

Here's the full code, and I'll explain it below.

google sheets =if(Query="","", QUERY(RecipeList, "Select * WHERE E matches'"&Query&"' OR F matches '"&Query&"' OR G matches '"&Query&"' OR H matches '"&Query&"' OR I matches '"&Query&"'"))

First, if our Query is an empty string, we want nothing to be returned...this is when none of the dropdowns are filled in and the result will be an empty table on the dashboard.

Select *: this means to select all, or return all the values in the query range.

WHERE E matches '"&Query&"': This is the beginning of the criteria. E is literally column E from our Data sheet. That's where the Ingredient1 named range lives. F is where Ingredient2 is...and so on.

By using matches, we are telling the query to see if any value in the Query named range matches any value in each of the specified ingredient columns. We have to use the funky syntax of single and double quotes to make the query function know that we're using that Query named range and not the word or string, "Query".

The bar lines in our Query named range functions as the OR operator, so when there are multiple ingredients in the dropdown list, the query statement looks in each column for either one or the other ingredient.

Conclusion

This was a ton of fun to make, and I hope you've been able to learn some valuable skills by following along.

We've imported data, cleaned it up, created named ranges, dropdown menus and dynamically changing logical tests...all for the sake of a query statement that returns the recipes we need based on the ingredient(s) we give it.

Come follow me on YouTube where I'm making more content like this weekly. 👋

Have a great one!

In this article, I'll give you a brief overview of Google Apps Script by showing you how to do something very simple: clearing a bunch of data in your spreadsheet.

gif of Homer Simpson saying, of course, it's so simple.

What is Apps Script?

Good question. Though you may be familiar with the square grid that makes up the interface of most spreadsheets, you may not know that behind the scenes, there is a powerful cloud-based JavaScript platform.

Apps Script lets you write custom functions, automations, add-ons and more. The screenshot below is from Google Workspace Docs:

Google Workspace docs

Open Apps Script

Here is the link to the demo sheet if you'd like to follow along and/or make a copy.

You can also build one with me by opening a new sheet: https://sheets.new.

And here's a video walkthrough detailing everything we're about to do:

For our example, we just need some data to clear. In my business we use this apps script to clear out templates once a month that we use weekly for inventory purposes.

We'll build a miniature version of this to practice with, but the principles we go over can be used on much larger scales where apps script can save a ton of time and effort.

Here's what our sheet will look like: four weeks worth of inventory and order amounts.

screenshot of order form in Google Sheets

We want an automated way to clear the data in the inventory and order columns.

Yes, you could simply select that range and hit delete or backspace. But if your spreadsheet is larger and more nuanced, there may be tens or hundreds of ranges to select.

And this is where Apps Script comes in super handy.

gif of Bill Murray

To open Apps Script, go to Extensions -> Apps Script.

Screenshot of Extensions Toolbar

🤔Now, what's better than working in a dapper spreadsheet?

Being able to write custom code for it!

From here, we're greeted with our old friend, the code editor.

We'll give this project a name of Clear Range at the top, and then making sure the code editor is selected on the left side-bar, we'll begin writing our first function, also named clearRange:

We can save our progress as we write by either pressing CTRL + S or clicking the save disk in the toolbar.

screenshot of apps script code editor

It wouldn't be coding with a console to debug ourselves, and sure enough, there is a Logger.log() method built in to Apps Script. Let's write our first Apps Script...script 😀 to log the message, Hello console! :):

function clearRange() {
  Logger.log('Hello console! :)')
}

And here's what you should see when you hit the Run button in the toolbar:

Screenshot of Logger.log() in Apps Script

Okay, so things are indeed working. Let's get to business with our actual script...

How to Add a Custom Menu

We can execute our code within the code editor by clicking Run, but we don't want to open this up every time we use the code. So, let's add a custom menu to the toolbar inside our spreadsheet.

We've got two options here: creating a custom menu or creating an addon menu. The custom menu will function as a dropdown menu directly on the Toolbar to the right of the Help menu. The addon menu will display within the regular Extensions dropdown menu.

Let's add the custom menu. It can be helpful to copy methods from the Apps Script Docs and then fit them to our purposes. That's what I've done below from the createMenu() method here:

function onOpen(e) {
  SpreadsheetApp.getUi()
      .createMenu('Clear Entries')
      .addItem('Clear \'em all!', 'clearRange')
      .addSeparator()
      .addToUi();
}

This creates a menu when the spreadsheet is opened named Clear Entries. Within the menu, there's a clickable item named Clear 'em all! that calls the clearRange function.

How to Add the Function

Now, we need the function to do more than log a message to the console.

We can clear the contents of a range or ranges in a few ways. We'll do it here by naming the ranges that we will want to clear. This will prevent us from having to hard code cell references in case those change down the road as we modify the spreadsheet.

I've named each week's inventory and order columns as named ranges:

screenshot of named ranges

Then, in our function we make a variable to hold an array of all the named ranges, iterate over each one in a forEach() loop, and clear each range's contents using the clearContent() method.

Very simple, and only it takes a few lines of code:

function clearRange(){
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var ranges = ss.getNamedRanges();
  ranges.forEach(range => range.getRange().clearContent());
}

In the demo Google Sheet, I included the alternative way to write this with A1 notation if you needed to not use the named ranges.

How to Execute the Function

When you first execute a function that requires access to your data, you'll be greeted by this Authorization screen.

authorization screenshot

Choose your Google account, click Advanced when you see the "Google hasn't verified this app" screen:

Google verification screen

It will describe what the function trying to execute is going to have permission to access. Click Allow:

screenshot allowing permission to use our new function

Once you've allowed the permissions, you'll need to execute the function again for it to actually run this time. You'll see this running script dialog pop up at the top:

screenshot of running script dialog box

And, voilà!

We've cleared our range :)

gif of the spreadsheet range clearing

Summary

I hope this has been a useful walkthrough for you, and that you learned something new. I use a version of this very script in the real world on a regular basis. It's an example of a pretty small thing that saves a ton of time and errors.

Come say hey and subscribe to my YouTube channel over here. I create walkthroughs and tech content weekly.

Have a great one! 👋