Increment column of cells by 1 if a condition is met - google-apps-script

Question

I am trying to make a macro that will change columns C:5 to C:bottom of the sheet.
These cells should be incremented by 1 if the cell to the left (B:5 to end) is equal to the string 'TRUE'.
Here is what I have so far but the condition is not being met. I also don't know the best way to apply this to the whole column. Should I do a for loop?
Here is what I have so far
function increment() {
var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
var reocurring = spreadsheet.getRange("B5").getValue().toString();
if (reocurring == 'TRUE')
{
var value = spreadsheet.getRange('C5').getValue();
spreadsheet.getRange('C5').setValue(value + 1);
}
};

Answer 1

Issue:
Your if statement condition isn't being met. This is because getValue() returns values with their associated type. Your "TRUE" value is being recognized as a boolean, not string like your if statement is looking for. You are using toString() but this changes the value to 'true' rather than 'TRUE', so your if statement condition still is not met.
Solution:
There are a few ways around this:
Change your if statement to look for a boolean:
if (reocurring === true)
Force the value to string and upper case to make sure your condition is met:
var reocurring = spreadsheet.getRange("B5").getValue().toString().toUpperCase();
Use getDisplayValue() to return a string from the beginning:
var reocurring = spreadsheet.getRange("B5").getDisplayValue();
Looping through the sheet:
Since this could be quite a long-running script if you're running it for a large data set, it's best to work with arrays here. I've tried to comment the code so it's a little easier to understand but if you have any questions please let me know.
function increment() {
var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
//get array values in columns B and C starting from row 5
var array = spreadsheet.getRange(5, 2, spreadsheet.getLastRow(), 2).getValues();
//loop through array
for (i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
if (array[i][0] === true) {
//increment value in row C by 1
array[i][1] = array[i][1] + 1;
}
}
//set new incremented values
spreadsheet.getRange(5, 2, array.length, array[0].length).setValues(array);
}
References:
getValues()
setValues()
JavaScript Arrays
JavaScript Data Types