Question

Why doesn’t this work?

function sendDuesReminder() {

  var paid = 3;
  var name = 1;
  var submitted = 0;
  var allowance = 9;
  var ms = 86400000; // Number of milliseconds in a day
  var today = new Date();
  var reminder = 72;
  var data = SpreadsheetApp.openById('___').getSheetByName('Master').getDataRange().getValues();

  for (var i = 1; i < data.length; i++) {
    if (data[i][paid] != 'Yes' &&
        data[i][paid] != 'yes' &&
        data[i][reminder] == '' &&
        ((((today.valueOf()) - (data[i][submitted].valueOf()))/ms) > allowance)) {
        MailApp.sendEmail("___", "___") ;
    SpreadsheetApp.openById('___').getSheetByName('Master').getRange(i+1, reminder).setValue(today);
    }

 if (data[i][paid] != 'Yes' &&
        data[i][paid] != 'yes' &&
        data[i][reminder] != null &&
       ((((today.valueOf()) - (data[i][reminder].valueOf()))/ms) > allowance)) {
        MailApp.sendEmail("___", "___") ;
        SpreadsheetApp.openById('___').getSheetByName('Master').getRange(i+1, reminder).setValue(today);
    }
  SpreadsheetApp.flush();        
  }
  Browser.msgBox("OK. Reminder e-mails have been sent. !")
}

What I really want to do is say send the e-mail if column BT is empty OR if the date in column BT is older than 9 days. But I didn’t know how to include an or statement within the if statement. So I just set up two separate if statements.

When I use ”, though, for the second if statement, I get an error saying that it can’t get the value of something that’s undefined.

When I use null or undefined, it doesn’t work.

Anybody have any thoughts?

Answer 1

• Are you sure you have 72 columns in your spreadsheet ? when you use data[i][reminder] == '' the error returned concerns the first term of the equal, not the second… so I guess data doesn’t have 72 secondary index and this is returning an error.
  (EDIT : to be more clear : you cannot get the value of an undefined item using .valueOf and divide it by something, that’s why you get “an error saying that it can’t get the value of something that’s undefined “.)
• If you want to learn about how to implement OR statement you can have a look at w3school, ‘Comparison Operators’
• Note that you can compare date object directly, you don’t need to convert them to milliseconds explicitely, javascript does it internally.

here is an example of how you could write this shortly

var tendaysBefore = new Date(new Date().getTime()-10*24*60*60*1000);// 10 days before
 if (data[i][paid].toLowerCase() != 'yes' && (data[i][reminder] == ''||(data[i][reminder] == null || data[i][submitted]< tendaysBefore)) { // not 'yes' and one of the 3 other conditions
    MailApp.sendEmail("___", "___") ;
SpreadsheetApp.openById('___').getSheetByName('Master').getRange(i+1, reminder).setValue(today);
}