Month: May 2019

Google Apps Script: Create an HTML email reminder service from Google Sheet data.

Google Apps Script: SpreadsheetApp, Utilities, MailApp, UrlFetchApp, HtmlService, onOpen

Ever wanted a quick way to send reminders to staff, letting them know that their task is overdue?

I often have to provide Google Sheet checklists that administration team managers can crosscheck to see if their team members have complete a certain task.

Reminding staff to complete a task can be time consuming and irritating. What if you could send an email to all those staff members who haven’t completed the task with a simple click of the button?

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a Google Apps Script HTML email mail merge service that will send an email to a staff member who has not completed their task, indicated by a missing tick on a tickbox.

We will use the sample sheet below:

the badger Google Sheet

The Google Sheets reminder is triggered by a custom menu item.  You can see it at the top right of the image.

When the reminder is sent, it collects the rows of staff that have not indicated that they have completed the task.  It then sends an email to those staff members  with the reminder below:

HTML Email Reminder Google Apps Script
Get it! Badger! Ha!

As you can see, I’ve added some custom HTML to highlight the header and modify the width of the image. The email contains a number of unique pieces of data gathered from the Google Sheet Row:

  • The name of the user.
  • The deadline.
  • The name of the sheet (In this case, Tester).
  • The number of days overdue.

It also contains a link to the check sheet for the user to update once they have completed their task.

Back at The Badger Google Sheet, an alert window appears once the code is completed and also indicates any emails that could not be sent.

To get started you can Make a Copy of the Google Sheet by following this link:

Continue reading “Google Apps Script: Create an HTML email reminder service from Google Sheet data.”

Google Workspace Group Email Reply Settings: How to reply to the group or just the sender of the group in Gmail

Gsuite: Groups for Business, Gmail

Note: This post is for those who have Gsuite admin permissions. 

GSuite groups are a great bulk email tool. They can be used:

  • To send announcements to a group.
  • As a collaborative email for teams to communicate with each other.
  • As an internal or public facing support email.
  • To send emails and notifications to groups that may require a response only to the sender.

Surprisingly, all these reasons for using group emails all have different priorities and expectations for receiving and replying to emails.

Continue reading “Google Workspace Group Email Reply Settings: How to reply to the group or just the sender of the group in Gmail”

Google Sheets: How to create a task completion check sheet. (Updated Feb 2022)

Google Sheet: IMPORTRANGE, IF, TODAY, conditional formatting, tick box, alternating colors, protect sheet and ranges, share sheet 

Sometimes you have teams, staff or students who all need to complete reports and tasks by a certain date, but you need a way to keep track of when the reports are complete so that you can compile them later.

The following tutorial is a simple tick box-based Google Sheet that the user ticks when they have finished writing their quarterly report. I use something like this in my day to day to keep track of a number of reporting processes.

This is very much a follow-along guide for Google Sheet Beginners to help develop some basics skills and think about how to design Sheets for the workplace. Feel free to read what you need or skip to the end for a link to the google sheet for you to make a copy of.

Here is what we will complete by the end of the tutorial.

Task completion check sheet google sheets

If the user’s tick box had not been ticked in Column ‘C’, Column ‘D’ will automatically report Overdue in red and Column ‘E’ will report the number of days overdue.

There is a space set aside for administration to note the reminders that they have sent to the user and the last date the reminder was sent. Admin can easily copy the emails and send a message to those staff who have not completed their report by the deadline.

Let me walk you through the workflow for creating this:

Continue reading “Google Sheets: How to create a task completion check sheet. (Updated Feb 2022)”

Google Apps Script: Get the last row of a data range when other columns have content like hidden formulas and check boxes [updated Mar 2022]

Google Apps Script: getRange, getLastRow, getDataRange, spreadsheetApp – requires a basic understanding of GAS. Updated 01 Dec 2021

Finding the last row of a data range in Google Sheets using Google Apps Script is a pretty common task. We often do this to find the next available free row to insert new data or to copy an entire data range to put into an array in Google Apps Script.

Generally, for fairly clean data, or a small range of data, we would rely on two approaches to get the data we need:

  • getLastRow(): this will get the last row in a Google Sheet that has data in it. It determines the last row based on the last available row value in all columns in the spreadsheet.
  • getDataRange(): this will get the range up to the last row and column with values in it.

Let’s take a quick look at this clean data set:

Continue reading “Google Apps Script: Get the last row of a data range when other columns have content like hidden formulas and check boxes [updated Mar 2022]”

Google Sheets: How to hide formula error warnings where there is no data or the data divides by zero

Google Sheets, IFERROR, ISBLANK, IF

Have you ever set up a Google Sheet with formulas that you drag all the way down to the bottom? See all those messy error values littering your otherwise immaculate spreadsheet when those formulas don’t reference a value? It sucks, right?

Formual errors referencing empty values Google Sheets

What if I told you that you could hide all those messy errors? What if I told you that you could truly have that pristine nirvana that you have been imagining that your Google Sheet project would truly be?

Drink the Kool-Aid and strap in, my friends, as your very own guru in a goat takes you on a journey of enlightenment into hiding formula error when:

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