Delete Cells Based on Date

Question

I need a help with a cell-deletion script. In general, I want to run a reset script that clears out all of the data up to the day I run it. Because I am statically inputting values into those cells that are matching up with information from a filter, I believe I need to delete those cells to properly line up my inputs with where the filter information will be after I delete the expired rows from the exporting page.

Here's what I want to do in my script: If the Column F value < today's date, then delete the cells in I, J, and K and shift the cells below them up. I think I found code to do this, but it takes so long to run that the program times out before it can get through more than a few rows. I will use a for loop to run it over 73 pages, so if it is lagging out on one...yeah, I need help!

function deleteEntries() { 
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();

  var datarange = ss.getDataRange();
  var lastrow = datarange.getLastRow();
  var values = datarange.getValues();

  var currentDate = new Date();

  for (i = lastrow; i >= 5; i--) {
    var tempdate = values[i-1][5];

    if (tempdate < currentDate)  
    {
      ss.getRange(i-1, 8).deleteCells(SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.ROWS);
      ss.getRange(i-1, 9).deleteCells(SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.ROWS);
      ss.getRange(i-1, 10).deleteCells(SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.ROWS);
}}}

Answer 1

In accordance with Apps Script "best practices" , you will want to limit the use of the Spreadsheet Service to improve execution times. There are two "immediate" optimizations that can be considered:

1. Delete more than 1 cell at a time in a row To do this, simply select a 1-row x 3-column range: ss.getRange(i-1, 8, 1, 3) instead of selecting (i-1, 8) , (i-1, 9) , (i-1, 10) and calling deleteCells on each of the three Ranges .
2. Sort your sheet before deleting such that only 1 delete call is necessary (eg the C++ stdlib "erase-remove" idiom ). If your data is sorted based on column F, such that all data that should be removed is at the end, then you simply need to iterate the in-memory array (a very fast process) to locate the first date that should be removed, and then remove all the data below & including it.

An implementation of option 2 would look like this ( I assume you use frozen headers, as they do not move when the sheet or range is sorted ).

function sortDescAndGetValuesBack_(s, col) {
  return s.getDataRange().sort({column: col, ascending: false}).getValues();
}
function deleteAllOldData() {
  const sheets = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheets()
      .filter(function (sheet) { /** some logic to remove sheets that this shouldn't happen on */});
  const now = new Date();
  const dim = SpreadsheetApp.Dimension.ROWS;

  sheets.forEach(function (sheet) {
    var values = sortDescAndGetValuesBack_(sheet, 6); // Col 6 = Column F
    for (var i = sheet.getFrozenRows(), len = values.length; i < len; ++i) {
      var fVal = values[i][5]; // Array index 5 = Column 6
      if (fVal && fVal < now) { // if equality checked, .getTime() is needed
        console.log({message: "Found first Col F value less than current time",
                     index: i, num2del: len - i, firstDelRow: values[i],
                     currentTime: now, sheet: sheet.getName()});
        var delRange = sheet.getRange(1 + i, 8, sheet.getLastRow() - i, 3);
        console.log({message: "Deleting range '" + sheet.getName() + "!" + delRange.getA1Notation() + "'"});
        delRange.deleteCells(dim);
        break; // nothing left to do on this sheet.
      }
    }
    console.log("Processed sheet '" + sheet.getName() + "'");
  });
}

References:

• Array#filter
• Array#forEach
• Range#sort
• Range#deleteCells