Notify Change Needed Worksheet Cell Not Blank Specific Days
In this article, we will discuss how to create a Google Sheets add-on that notifies users when a cell is not blank on specific days of the week. This can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as reminding team members to update their progress or ensuring that important data is entered in a timely manner.
Prerequisites
To follow along with this tutorial, you will need to have some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Familiarity with Google Sheets and Google Apps Script is also helpful.
Getting Started
To create our add-on, we will need to use Google Apps Script, which is a JavaScript-based scripting language developed by Google. To get started, open a new Google Sheets document and click on “Extensions” > “Apps Script” in the top menu.
// Replace 'sheetName' with the name of your sheet
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName('sheetName');
This code gets the active spreadsheet and the sheet with the specified name. Next, we will need to set up a trigger that checks the sheet at regular intervals.
Setting Up the Trigger
To set up a trigger, click on “Edit” > “Current project’s triggers” in the top menu. Click on the “Add Trigger” button and set up a time-driven trigger to run our function every hour or every few minutes.
// Replace 'functionName' with the name of your function
ScriptApp.newTrigger('functionName')
.timeBased()
.everyMinutes(1) // Change to your desired interval
.create();
This code creates a new trigger that runs our function every minute. You can adjust the interval to your desired frequency.
Checking for Blank Cells
Now, we will need to write a function that checks for blank cells in our sheet. We will also specify which days of the week we want to check.
function checkForBlankCells() {
var daysToCheck = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; // 1 = Sunday, 2 = Monday, ..., 7 = Saturday
var today = new Date();
var dayOfWeek = today.getDay();
if (daysToCheck.includes(dayOfWeek)) {
var range = sheet.getDataRange();
var values = range.getValues();
for (var i = 0; i < values.length; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < values[i].length; j++) {
if (values[i][j] === '' && sheet.getRange(i + 1, j + 1).isBlank()) {
// Send notification
}
}
}
}
}
}
This code checks if the current day is included in the ‘daysToCheck’ array. If it is, it gets the data range of the sheet and loops through each cell. If a cell is blank and its background color is not set to white (which indicates that the cell has been intentionally left blank), it sends a notification.
Sending Notifications
To send notifications, we will use the ‘MailApp’ service provided by Google Apps Script. We will also need to specify the recipient of the notification.
function sendNotification(cell) {
var recipient = '[email protected]'; // Replace with the recipient's email address
var subject = 'Cell needs to be filled out';
var body = 'Please fill out cell ' + cell.getA1Notation();
MailApp.sendEmail(recipient, subject, body);
}
This code sends an email to the specified recipient with the subject “Cell needs to be filled out” and the body “Please fill out cell X”, where X is the cell that needs to be filled out. You can modify this code to suit your needs.
Putting It All Together
Finally, we need to call the ‘checkForBlankCells’ function from within our trigger function.
function functionName() {
checkForBlankCells();
}
This code calls the ‘checkForBlankCells’ function whenever the trigger is activated. You can replace ‘functionName