Creating New Spreadsheets from Spreadsheet - google-apps-script

Question

I am creating a sheet that can create a series of sheets that interact to help run a simulation. Part of this project involves creating a series of sheets- individual score sheets- that can only be accessed by single players in the game. The code I'm hoping to use is below, but I'm running into a series of issues. The first is thatit says I don't have permission to run SpreadsheetApp.create. I have spent about an hour looking around online for how to cure this, but just don't understand it and can't find a good answer. The second, and potentially broader issue, is that it seems incredibly complicated to use GAS to interact with different spreadsheets (i.e. not within the same spreadsheet). At a later point in the project, we will have to retrieve information from these sheets, etc. and if it is going to be difficult to do through scripts, may have to think of a workaround.
/** #OnlyCurrentDoc */
function individualSheets(){
var playerarray = playerArray();
var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
var spreadsheetlinks = []
//creates individual sheet for each player, then adds the link of their sheet to a list
for(i=0;i<playerarray.length;i++){
var spreadsheetname = playerarray[i];
var newspreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.create(spreadsheetname);
spreadsheetlinks.push(DriveApp.getUrl(newspreadhseet));
}
//pasting the links of each player in the appropriate sheet
for(i=0;i<spreadsheetlinks.length;i++){
spreadsheet.setActiveSheet("PlayerInfo").getRange('D'+(i+1)).activate()
spreadsheet.getCurrentCell.setValue(spreadhseetlinks[i])
}
}

Answer 1

Apps Script doesn't have difficulty to use several Spreadsheets in the same script.
I would add another array to store the Ids, so you won't have to get them from the urls:
var spreadsheetlinks = []
var spreadsheetIds = [];
//creates individual sheet for each player, then adds the link of their sheet to a list
for(i=0;i<playerarray.length;i++){
var spreadsheetname = playerarray[i];
var newspreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.create(spreadsheetname);
spreadsheetlinks.push(DriveApp.getUrl(newspreadhseet));
spreadsheetIds.push(newspreadsheet.getId);
}
You can open the Spreadsheets using openById, so you can use an unlimited amount of them:
var sprSheet1 = SpreadsheetApp.openById('id 1');
var sprSheet2 = SpreadsheetApp.openById('id 2');
var sprSheet3 = SpreadsheetApp.openById('id 3');
...
or even better:
var sprSheets = [];
for (var j = 0; j < spreadsheetIds.length; j++){
sprSheets.push(SpreadsheetApp.openById(spreadsheetIds[j]);
}
Regarding the SpreadsheetApp.create issue, make sure you authorized the needed scopes:
Scripts that use this method require authorization with one or more of
the following scopes:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.currentonly
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets
You can check them in Apps Script View > Manifest file. If you never touched this, they won't show up. You can add them manually:
"oauthScopes": [
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets",
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file"
]
In case you still get the permission issue when creating the Spreadsheet, you might want to check the playerArray function to see if it's actually returning a String.