This post covers one of the most basic aspects of interacting with a Google Sheets through Apps Script which is accessing some data contained in a cell within a sheet and writing data to a cell.

Let’s access the content of a cell using App Script

Accessing “Sheet1” in the current Google Sheets:

function accessInput() {
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var s = ss.getSheetByName("Sheet1");
}

Accessing the content of the cell A1 and saving it into a variable.

function accessInput() {
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var s = ss.getSheetByName("Sheet1");
  var cellContent = s.getRange("A1").getValue();
}

Now let’s write the content into a cell

I am now going to write the content of cell A1 into cell A2:

function accessInput() {
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var s = ss.getSheetByName("Sheet4");
  var cellContent = s.getRange("A1").getValue();
  
  s.getRange("A2").setValue(cellContent);
}

If you now just type anything into cell A1 within Sheet1 and run the script in the editor you should see the content of A1 being duplicated in A2.

Et voila!