Google Apps Script/ Google Sheets - Only copy IF

Question

Updated the question; hope this is enough info. Please say if there is anything else needed to answer this question, I am new here, but I am more than happy to learn!

I am looking for a way to tell cells GN4:GN to only copy from cells in GM4:GM if they contain "PASS", "UNCERTAIN", or "REJECT"; if not, nothing should be done. It is important that if the cells in GM4:GM contain something else than the listed words, GN4:GN stay the same as before.

So I have got two sheets:

Sheet 1 is the dashboard, in cell B3 you can enter an email adress (that belongs to a candidate) and through vlookup you can see all the relevant data for this email adress. Now, you want to make a decision based on the data you see and it would be nice if that decision could be made on the present sheet. I created a dropdown menu with 'PASS', 'UNCERTAIN', and 'REJECT'.

Sheet 2 is the data sheet. Here, the decision made in sheet 1 should be saved --> to the correct e-mail adress (or row).

To solve this I made two columns GM & GN. GM contains the follwing:

=IF($A4=Sheet1!$B$3;VLOOKUP($A4&"dec";
{ARRAYFORMULA(Sheet1!$B$3&Sheet1!$C$6)
\Candidate_View!$E$6};2;0);"")

So this orders cells in GM to either give out what is in Sheet 1 or be left blank. And when I change the email adress in Sheet 1, another cell in GM will have input, and the rest will be blank.

In GN I thought about doing a Query, but I do not think it will work. The problem is, there are formulas that can tell you in which cells a certain "text" is but no formulas (that I know of) act only if a certain "text" is in a cell (like a trigger).

This is what I dream of:

  Moment 1:                                       Moment 2:

 |A                     |GM       |GN       |    |A|GM  |GN       |
 |----------------------|---------|---------|    |-|----|---------|
4|email@email.com       |         |UNCERTAIN|    | |PASS|PASS     |
5|haha@test.com         |         |UNCERTAIN|    | |    |UNCERTAIN|
6|rainbowlover@email.com|UNCERTAIN|UNCERTAIN|    | |    |UNCERTAIN|
7|aaaa@bbbb.ccc         |         |PASS     |    | |    |PASS     |
8|help@me.please        |         |PASS     |    | |    |PASS     |

Also tried out doing it in apps script but did not get that far...

function decisions(){
 var source="GM4:GM";
 var destination="GN4:GN";
 
SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName("Sheet2").getRange(source).findAll["UNCERTAIN","PASS",
"REJECT",false] //so this is basically which cells I want to copy

  
  SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName("Sheet2").getRange(source).
  copyTo(SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName("Sheet2").getRange(destination) // and this 
is where I want them copied. How do I combine the two?
} 

Hope what I'm trying to do is a bit clearer now.. Only to assure you again. I am trying to figure out on my own as well, just thought someone might have a good idea or a clue for me. No need to solve the whole thing. I have started with google sheets about a months, so I am still looking for hours to find something like query...

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can achieve this by using the IF function of Google Sheets:

=if(B3="reject", "reject", if(B3="uncertain", "uncertain", if(B3="pass", "pass", B3)))

Note that this formula is not case sensitive. So "Pass", "PASS", "pAss" or any other variation outputs the specified string, which is "pass" in this case.

Please see the example sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18aMCIPgrMeyFiuxLbE4s2h7v7YCkbRjhGpS9anQh1-0/edit#gid=0

If you want to modify cell values through Google Apps Script, you should use .setFormula() ( See the documentation here )