Sending emails with attachments from a google spreadsheet

Question

I would like to know the possibilities involved in the concept I am trying to do, and if it will be possible.

I will have a google spreadsheet with 3 columns.

NAME | FILENAME | EMAIL

I will place all the Files in the FILENAME column on my drive, so they will be easily accesible.

What I would like to do is when I load the spreadsheet I and run the script, I would like it to:

Use the NAME as the Email Subject + a string of text. By reading the FILENAME Title I would like it to find the file on drive and attach it to the email.

The EMAIL Column will just be the Email I want to send the FILENAME too.

Is this possible using Google app script?

I know how to send emails using google app script and send specific Row data, I am confused about the attachment FILENAME part.

Answer 1

What you want to do should be easy, there is an optional parameter in the sendMail method to add attachments as an array of Blobs and the DriveApp service has a getBlob method to retrieve these data.

So everything looks like an easy game ;-)

But there is one issue you could meet in the development of your script : files in Google Drive can have the same name... (that's why the getFileByName method returns a file iterator instead of a single file object).

What would you do if 2 or more files have the same name in your drive ?

This is often the source of numerous issues (see this thread for example) so you have to be extremely careful about how you name your files or - probably a better solution - preferably store the files IDs rather than their names. The files IDs are by definition unique and more straightforward to get although not so human friendly I admit ;-)

So I'd suggest you store both values in your spreadsheet, it will make your life much easier !