Add the Editor’s Email when they Tick the Check Box in Google Sheets with Apps Script

This tutorial is for Google Workspace Domain accounts.

Recently, I was a guest interviewee at a Google Workspace Developer Summit in Singapore and an attendee asked me how they could automatically add the editor’s email to an adjacent cell when the user checks a check box in Google Sheets.

This can be incredibly handy for project managers to see when a user completes a task or, at a glance, who edited a row.

Of course, there are some simple ways of doing this out-of-the-box within Google Sheets.

  1. A simple right-click > Show edit history on any cell can reveal who has edited the cell in the past.
    Show cell history in Google Sheets
  2. If you want a more detailed history of edits on your Google Sheet workbook then you can always select the version history button in the top right of your Sheet.

    Google Sheets Version History
    The ‘clock’ icon here opens the version history page.

The problem with these options is that it is not there on the screen for the user to quickly see who edited what line.

In this tutorial, we are going to use some Google Apps Script magic to automatically add the editor’s email to the row when they click that checkbox.

Let’s dive in!

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Creating Webhooks for Google Chat App with Apps Script

In this tutorial, we follow the adventures of Captain Webhook and his crew in their insatiable desire to report their latest booty conquest to me via Google Chat webhooks…

That, dear readers, did not come out right.

Webhooks are HTTP POST requests that are usually generated by a triggered event. The event could come from any third-party source within Google Workspace like:

Or it can occur with other third-party services. Imagine that you want to get an update from:

  • Your Stripe or PayPal account whenever a new payment comes in.
  • A course management service like Gumroad.
  • Patreon when another awesome supporter shows you some love.

Or when a rather rambunctious figment of my imagination insists on updating me when his latest haul of treasure has come in… live.

Sigh.

Captain Webhook of the Pirate Sheet HTTPS Request

Chat App webhooks will need an intermediary step for them to be compiled in a way that the Google Chat API can understand. We’ve chosen Google Apps Script here to do this, but you can choose to use any other language to convert your data into Chat API readable JSON or even build in a CLI to post your webhook request.

In this tutorial, we will cover how to:

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