Question

I’ve got a master sheet that I need to view and filter data from. The data is brought into the sheet using the =Sheet2!B7 syntax.

The problem is that I keep accidentally editing the data in the master sheet which does not update the original copy.

I would like a script that alerts me if I’m in the master sheet and stops me from editing the cells. I still want to be able to filter the data so simply locking the sheet would work.

I’ve been trying to modify this script (posted by Yuzhy) but so far I haven’t been able to get it to work.

(I’m not sure whether this is the right place for this question, it was either this or stackexchange / superuser, if it’s wrong please advise.)

function onEdit(event){
 var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var CellRow = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveRange().getRow();
  var CellColumn = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveRange().getColumn();

  if (CellColumn == 2){
    sheet.getRange(CellRow, CellColumn).setFormula("=A"+CellRow+"+1");
    Browser.msgBox("DON'T MESS WITH THE FORMULAS!");
  }
}

Any help much appreciated.

Answer 1

From reading your code it seems that you’re trying to do a different thing from what you’ve explained. I see that you trying to “repair” the formulas. But why if (CellColumn == 2 )? You want to protect only column B, not the whole “master” sheet?

Can you share a sample spreadsheet of what your sheet structure looks like?

Anyway, I’ll suppose that you want to warn when you overwrite anything on your “master” sheet, auto-repairing the formula is a little more complicated (depending on your scenario), and after reading the popup it’s easy to just hit undo and recover it. But you really mean to auto-repair the formulas, I’ll enhance my code after you share a sample of your spreadsheet, since it’s a slightly complicated and depends highly on your structure.

function onEdit() {
  var s = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  if( s.getName() == "Master" )
    Browser.msgBox("DON'T MESS WITH THE FORMULAS!");
}

If you’re doing simple reference formulas on other sheets it’s somewhat easier and probably a good solution for you to use an ArrayFormula, that will auto-replace back the value when you change any cell, except for the first cell, but then a manual undo will be so rare and obvious that it will not be an issue, I think. I did an example of array formula on the spreadsheet you linked, please take a look. On A1 I wrote:

=ArrayFormula(Sheet1!A1:F20)

Now, if you go and accidentally writes something on B2 for example, it value will automatically come back. Try and see if that’s a good solution for you.