Automatically change cells value at specific dates - google-sheets

I want to achieve following on the google spreadsheet :
Let's say I want some of my cells to take the value of another cell at specific dates and times.
The value is actually just a background color, but if that's a problem, it could be some text, even if I prefer the background color.
For example in this sheet :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15icn5bi-wZY1HZeLwpoM2Z_XrKOqydUH1BgdDGEEqLM/edit?usp=sharing
Let's say I want my cells A3, A5 and A6 to become like the cell F1 every monday, wednesday and friday at 6:30 am GMT+1.
Then the user can modify it but every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6:30 am GMT+1 the value is reset to the value of F1.

You can do this with this code and a time based trigger.
function colorCells() {
var ss=SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet()
var s=ss.getSheetByName("Feuille 1")
var c1=s.getRange("F1").getBackground()
s.getRange("A3").setBackground(c1)
s.getRange("A5").setBackground(c1)
s.getRange("A6").setBackground(c1)
}
On the scrips menu, select Edit>Current project's triggers.
Click to add a new one. Select the colorCells function, Time-driven,
Week timer, Every Monday, 6pm to 7pm. Select add new trigger and
repeat for Wed and Fri. You can't specify exactly the minute it will
run, but it will run in the selected hour. Here is an example you can copy and try.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y-YP7AckNCRZO9w_dc43ZpGbFrfZh-zBKiuC_bEiDdI/edit?usp=sharing

I would try to accomplish this by:
First, I would create a script to change the background of the desired cells using SpreadsheetApp;
Second, I would create a script using Selenium WebDriver to open the spreadsheet and execute the function;
Finally, schedule the selenium script to run at specific dates (cron);

Related

Google Sheets. Automatically change given date plus n days

Good afternoon. I have 2 cells for 2 dates with date format on them and formula =DATE(2022; 1; 19). One cell is a first day of a current week period. Another cell is first day of a next week (=B17+7). I want to make both those cells to automatically change +7 days every week after i enter for example the first current date.
You can use for the first day (monday)
=today()-WEEKDAY(today(),2)+1
One way of solving your need while escaping circular dependency error is to do the following:
Keep cell B17 as is (=B13+7), however, instead of putting a date in cell B13, just put the following formula :
=TODAY()-WEEKDAY(TODAY(),2)+1
The result would be that the 2 cells will always update to the correct dates every time you'd open the spreadsheet.

How to auto create a Month calendar in google sheets. Where first day of the month start in the colum of the (name)day

I want to create a calendar like in the second image. But I can not figure out how to start the first column is a monday. So I fill it by 'hand' like in the first image.
I tried to create it automatic. Starting with the first day of the month and add one day the next columns like in the second picture:
How I want it to look like:
How it is currently looking:
Google sheets example
I was solving the same problem for my bussiness, and I think I got the answer.
Your first task is to determine the first "calendar monday" of the month.
First, build the first day of the corresponding month:
[B2] =DATE(YEAR(A1); MONTH(A1); 1)
Then, get the WEEKDAY of the corresponding first day. The second argument represents what day your week starts with:
If type is 1, days are counted from Sunday and the value of Sunday is 1, therefore the value of Saturday is 7.
If type is 2, days are counted from Monday and the value of Monday is 1, therefore the value of Sunday is 7.
If type is 3, days are counted from Monday and the value of Monday is 0, therefore the value of Sunday is 6.
In my case, we count the week starting from Monday. This means when the first day of the month lands on Monday, the return value will be 0.
[C2] =WEEKDAY(B2; 3)
The number you get represents how many days you need to substract from the initial date to get the first "calendar monday" of the month:
[D2] =B2 - C2
This date is what you are looking for. The final formula:
[A3] =DATE(YEAR(A1); MONTH(A1); 1) - WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(A1); MONTH(A1); 1); 3)
The rest of the days, simply add 1 to each preceding date.
[A4] =A3 + 1
[A5] =A4 + 1
And so on.
Secondly, set the Number Format on the calendar cells to just show the day.
Format -> Number -> More Formats -> More Date and Time Formats.
Select just the day from the drop down.
Finally, use conditional formatting to "hide" the values that don't match the initial date
Use a custom formula for the formatting, as follows:
=MONTH(A3) <> MONTH(A1)
Apply to the calendar range. This will format dates that don't belong to the current date, so make sure to paint that white.
And that's about it. Good luck!

Google Sheets, increment cell by month

I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of how old accounts are by months.
Is there a way to have Google Sheets auto update a cell on the 1st of each month?
VG: An account is 78 months old and on Sept 1st it turns 79 months. I want to automatically update it on the 1st of the month so I won't have to manually add 1 to every account age cell.
This is for Excel:
If the value is 78 on 25 August 2016 and you want the value to increment of the first of each month, then enter:
=78+MONTH(TODAY())-MONTH(DATEVALUE("8/25/2016"))+12*(YEAR(TODAY())-YEAR(DATEVALUE("8/25/2016")))
Assuming that your dataset does include an account start date in column A, you can calculate how many whole months are between that date and system date today by using:
=DATEDIF(A2,TODAY(),"M")
Tested this in Excel but should work in Google Sheets as well.
You could add another field, and do the calculation from the sheet:
[A1]=<start date>
[A2]=datedif(a1,today(),"M")
Otherwise, you could use a script to do this once a month, but you would need a list of cells somewhere that need to be updated. I would need to see an example of your spreadsheet layout to give you working code.
The process would be to:
set a daily trigger
check for the first of the month
if it is, go and update all the cells
if not, try again tomorrow
This worked out well for me in Google Sheets
DATEDIF("<MY_STARTING_DATE>", today(), "M")
example:
DATEDIF("8/1/2021", today(), "M")

Calculate elapsed time using NOW() with conditional formatting

I'm trying to set up a Google Sheet for volunteers at the local dog shelter. The idea is to have an auto-updating spreadsheet that shows at a glance which dogs really need to be walked, in two ways:
conditional formatting the rows with color based on time elapsed:
red if it's been >6 hours since their last walk,
yellow for 3-6 hours, or
green if they were walked <3 hrs ago.
auto-sorting the rows so that the dogs that have gone the longest are always at the top of the list, and when they get walked, they go to the bottom of the list.
Here's where I'm at.
Problem 1: I'm trying to calculate time elapsed by using the NOW() function (which returns the current date and time), minus the time of the last walk. The problem is that if you only enter a time, Google apparently assumes the date is 12/30/1899. So if I put in 8:00 am, and the current time based on NOW() is 4:00 pm, instead of returning 8:00 hours, it calculates the the duration as 10,000,000+ hours that have elapsed since 8:00 am on December 30, 1899 up to the current date and time. (Similar problem discussed here).
If I keep the output cells in the HH:MM format, it'll initially look OK, because it'll just return the HH:MM as 8:00, BUT I can't use that because then the conditional formatting won't work - it's still actually calculating the 10,000,000 hours since 1899. So I can't set duration values for red/green/yellow because all the output values will be slowly increasing every day we get further away from 1899, meaning I would have to reset the ranges daily.
Obviously I could work around this by always including the time and date, but the idea is to have a spreadsheet that is idiot-proof so that any volunteer can use it by just adding the time they walked the dog. It won't work if they have to input the date too.
Problem 2: Assuming I can get the above to work, how can I set it up so the table automatically sorts itself after any change (i.e. when a dog gets walked and the entry gets updated)?
Help?
Please try:
Problem 1
Green is easy, just format all your data that way with standard fill (CF will override this where applicable).
Select A1 and apply a Custom formula is of:
=and($D1<>"",timevalue(now())>$D1+6/24)
with colour Red and Range A:E
Repeat (the order of these two is important):
=and($D1<>"",timevalue(now())>$D1+3/24)
with colour Yellow and Range A:E.
Save rules and close window.
Problem 2
Create a pivot table by selecting ColumnA:E (may have to get rid of some content present low down in the sheet first) and Data > Pivot Table Report..., to Rows Add field Dog name (do not Show totals), to Values Add field Time since last walk and Summarise by:SUM. Name the sheet PT.
In say J2 of your other sheet (not PT) enter:
=query(PT!A:B, "Select * order by B desc ")
May be worth noting that without the day part there might be problems where times span midnight - if you have walkers with insomnia?!
For the autosorting, I found a script elsewhere on stackoverflow and modified it slightly for my purposes:
function onEdit(event){
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
if(sheet.getName()=='Sheet1'){
var editedCell = sheet.getActiveCell();
var columnToSortBy = 4;
var tableRange = "a2:f91";
if(editedCell.getColumn() == columnToSortBy){
var range = sheet.getRange(tableRange);
range.sort( { column : columnToSortBy, ascending: true } );
}
}
}

Format times to display with 'AM/PM'

Normally, when I enter times in Google spreadsheet as 22:00:00 the display automatically switches to 10:00 PMbut sometimes it's not converting.
How can I set a common format for times in Google spreadsheet? I need this format: 8:00 PM.
Select all ranges that you wish to have this time format and go to Format > Number > More formats to select the one of your choice. (I think the one you want is near the bottom and shows as 3:59 PM.)
If you want to format a time with TEXT() to display with am/pm you can use:
=TEXT(DateField, "HAM/PM")
To get a results like
1am
1pm
10pm
12am
Use UPPER() to make it uppercase.

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