如何使用 getLastRow() & shift 删除谷歌应用程序脚本中列范围内的单元格

Question

I've been looking through stackoverflow for some help on how to script in google sheets a function that would allow me to remove empty cells in a range and shift them over (to the left) when completed. I've only seen questions regarding removing empty rows or columns instead of cells in a range.

This is what the data looks like I'm trying to work with:

example google sheet

I need to delete cells A1-A15 and shift over the other columns .

What's currently working is the following code, however it will delete/shift over the column even if there is data in the column (A) that I'm having the function review (ex. data in cell A6).

I want to ensure that this function doesn't go off if there is data in column A before the last and 2nd to last data entry as per the example. :

 function blankRemoval(){ var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName('sheet1');//need to call sheet by name as I have multiple tabs var lastRow = sheet.getLastRow() var cellsBlank = sheet.getRange(1,1).isBlank(); if(cellsBlank) { sheet.getRange(1,1,lastRow-3,1).deleteCells(SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.COLUMNS); // shifts cells left }//end of if }//end of function

So with this in mind, I thought I could make the variable cellsBlank to use.getRange(1,1,lastRow-3,1) as well so that it only looks through the range to the last row, and stops 3 from the last row. However when I use this code, it doesn't delete the cells if there is data in them or not (the function runs without errors but nothing occurs).

I've tried a few different items to use on this but I'm running into a wall as I'm not a proficient programmer. My guess is that it needs to iterate, or I'm doing something wrong with the range.

Also to note, there will always be 2 data entries in column A like my example, with data being one cell apart. This is a entry of sorts to help with historical review. I want to retain these two cells where they are, but shift the empty data above

Answer 1

Probably it should be this:

function blankRemoval(){
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName('sheet1');
  var col_A = sheet.getRange(1,1,sheet.getLastRow()-3,1);

  if (col_A.getValues().flat().filter(String).length == 0) { // <-- if the col A is empty
    col_A.deleteCells(SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.COLUMNS);
  }
}

.getValues() get a 2d array with values

.flat() convert the 2d array into an 1d array

.filter(String) remove from the array all empty cells

.length get a length of the array

This way, if the range contains empty cells only the array will have no elements (array.length = 0)

Before:

After:

Update

It turned out that some cells in column 'A' could contain spaces. Here is modified function that removes spaces from the range:

function blankRemoval(){
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName('sheet1');
  var col_A = sheet.getRange(1,1,sheet.getLastRow()-3,1);

  var contents = col_A.getValues().flat().join('').replace(/\s+/g,'');

  if (contents == '') col_A.deleteCells(SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.COLUMNS);
}

Answer 2

This seems to be the best function to use for the question I posed thanks to @Yuri. The clearContent helps remove any entries that would prevent the deleteCells action to go

 function blankRemoval(){ var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName('sheet1'); var col_A = sheet.getRange(1,1,sheet.getLastRow()-3,1); if (col_A.getValues().flat().filter(String).length == 0) { col_A.clearContent();} //<---checks if cell range is empty, and if so performs a clear content (this seemed to fix issues with any ghost entries) if (col_A.getValues().flat().filter(String).length == 0) { // <-- if the col A is empty col_A.deleteCells(SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.COLUMNS); } }