How To Set A New Default Tab As A Specific Spreadsheet on Google Sheets (Not As A Blank Page)? - google-sheets

Question

How do I set a new default tab to be a specific spreadsheet that I made with formulas, etc.., so that every time I click a new tab, it opens up this specific spreadsheet, instead of a blank Google sheet page?
Is there a VBA code?

Answer 1

grab the sheet tab and move it to the front:
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if this is a question about setting up a template as the default page for every newly created spreadsheet - that's not possible. templates are available for individual selection under this button:
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to actually "clone" the sheet you will need to use a script. you can try something like:
function cloneGoogleSheet() {
var name = "labnol";
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var sheet = ss.getSheetByName('Template').copyTo(ss);
/* Before cloning the sheet, delete any previous copy */
var old = ss.getSheetByName(name);
if (old) ss.deleteSheet(old); // or old.setName(new Name);
SpreadsheetApp.flush(); // Utilities.sleep(2000);
sheet.setName(company);
/* Make the new sheet active */
ss.setActiveSheet(sheet);
}

Answer 2

From my ad hoc trying, Google Sheet seems to determine the default Tab by the creation time. My simple solution is to copy/delete any Tab that is older than the desired new default.
For example, we have a Tab "New Default" that we want to set to the new default. Assume there are only a small number of Tabs (3 Tabs) created before the "New Default" Tab, and all other Tabs were created after the "New Default" tab.
(1) Create three new empty tabs.
(2) Copy over the three tabs created before the "new default" Tab,
so that we do not lose them. Then delete these three tabs.
Now the "New Default" becomes the default tab when open the link to the spreadsheet.
Note:
Of course, this approach has limitations and may need a script to do the copy/delete. Or even better if Google Sheet team adds support to set default though GUI directly.
Alternatives:
Before I came up with this low-tech solution, I also tried using a Google App Script .setActiveSheet("New Default") method on start. It works for the jumping; however, when people comment in the "New Default" tab, I got a notification in email. When clicking the comment, it jumps to the top of the default tab, which is annoying since it loses focus to the comments text.