Google Apps脚本getRange（）范围未找到错误

Question

I feel like I'm going about this in all the wrong way. I'm trying to automate some of my workload here. I'm cleaning up spreadsheets with 4 columns (AE), 2000+ rows. Column B contains website URLs, column D contains the URL's business name, generated from another source.

Sometimes the tool doesn't grab the name correctly or the name is missing, so it populates the missing entries in column D with "------" (6 hyphens). I've been trying to make a function that takes an input cell, checks if the contents of the cell are "------", and if it is the function changes the contents of the input cell to the contents of the cell two columns to the left (which is generally a website url). This is what I've come up with.

function replaceMissing(input) {
    var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
    //sets active range to the input cell
    var cell = sheet.getRange('"' + input + '"');
    //gets cell to fill input cell
    var urlCell = sheet.getRange(cell.getRow(), cell.getColumn() - 2);
    //gets contents of input cell as String
    var data = cell.getValue(); 
    //gets contents of urlCell as String
    var data2 = cell.getValue();


    //checks if input cell should be replaced
    if (data === "------") { 
      //set current cell's value to the value of the cell 2 columns to the left
      cell.setValue(data2);
    }
}

When I attempt to use my function in my sheet, the cell is returning the error

Error Range not found (line 4).

I'm assuming, based on similar questions people have asked, that this is how you use the A1 notation of the function with an argument. However, that doesn't seem to be the case, so I'm stuck. I also don't think my solution is very good period.

Answer 1

1) It's somewhat ambiguous in GAS documentation, but custom functions have quite a few limitations. They are better suited for scenarios where you need to perform a simple calculation and return a string or a number type value to the cell. While custom functions can call some GAS services, this practice is strongly discouraged by Google.

If you check the docs for the list of supported services, you'll notice that they support only some 'get' methods for Spreadsheet service, but not 'set' methods https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets/functions

That means you can't call cell.setValue() in the context of a custom function. It makes sense if you think about it - your spreadsheet can contain 1000s of rows, each with its own custom function making multiple calls to the server. In JavaScript, every function call creates its own execution context, so things could get ugly very quickly.

2) For better performance, use batch operations and don't alternate between read / write actions. Instead, read all the data you need for processing into variables and leave the spreadsheet alone. After processing your data, perform a single write action to update values in the target range. There's no need to go cell by cell when you can get the entire range using GAS.

Google Apps Script - best practices https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/support/best-practices

Below is a quick code example that runs onOpen and onEdit. If you need more flexibility in terms of when to run the script, look into dynamically-created triggers https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/script/script-app Because your spreadsheets have lots of rows, you may hit the execution quota anyway - by using triggers you can work around the limitation.

Finally, if a cell containing '----' is a rare occurrence, it might be better to create another array variable with new values and row numbers to update than updating the entire range. Personally, I think the single range update action would still be quicker, but you could try both approaches and see which one works best.

function onOpen(){

 test();


}

function onEdit() {

 test();

}


function test() {

  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  var sheet = ss.getSheetByName('yourSheetName');

  //range to replace values in
  var range = sheet.getRange(2, 4, sheet.getLastRow() - 1, 1);

  //range to get new values from
  var lookupRange = range.offset(0, -2);

  //2d array of values from the target range
  var values = range.getValues();
  //2d array of values from the source range
  var lookupValues = lookupRange.getValues();   

  //looping through the values array and checking if array element meets our condition
  for (var i=0; i < values.length; i++) {

      values[i][0] = (values[i][0] == '------') ? lookupValues[i][0] : values[i][0];

  }

  // one method call to update the range
  range.setValues(values);

}