Auto-updating column in Google Spreadsheet showing last modify date

Question

Trying to figure out a way to have column two auto-update to show a timestamp of the last update. I realize the doc shows a timestamp of the last modification, but we have a lot of clients accessing and adjusting the doc at the same time. So this request was put in. I'll admit I have not done coding, so this is beyond me.

Myanda had posted something that seemed along the right path, but we are not sure how to implement it for our needs:

Google Spreadsheet Timestamp?

Answer 1

Ok, here is a modified version of the code in my previous answer:

function onEdit(e) {
  // Your sheet params
  var sheetName = "MySheet";
  var dateModifiedColumnIndex = 2;
  var dateModifiedColumnLetter = 'B';

  var range = e.range; // range just edited
  var sheet = range.getSheet();
  if (sheet.getName() !== sheetName) {
    return;
  }

  // If the column isn't our modified date column
  if (range.getColumn() != dateModifiedColumnIndex) { 
    var row = range.getRow();
    var time = new Date();
    time = Utilities.formatDate(time, "GMT-08:00", "MM/dd/yy, hh:mm:ss");
    var dateModifiedRange = sheet.getRange(dateModifiedColumnLetter + row.toString());
    dateModifiedRange.setValue(time);
  };
 };

What this does is grabs the row of any cell that is changed and assigns a timestamp to the second column of that particular row.

To implement, all you need to do is go into the spreadsheet and click on Tools > Script Editor. In the resulting editor page, just paste this in there. Since this is an onEdit() function, it should work without having to add anything else to the cells of your spreadsheet, just paste it into the editor and save it.

For the timestamp, I set the format to MM/dd/yy and left the time. If you want to change it, you can just change the use of Utilities.formatDate.

Answer 2

FYI, the accepted answer uses DD as the day format, which will get you something like "312", i.e. the 312th day of the year.

I used this:

"yyyy-MM-dd, hh:mm:ss"

to get this:

2013-11-12, 03:43:20

Answer 3

I hope this is OK to put here. Below is a modification of the function above but to do it for a row (row 9) rather than columns. Figuring out how to use the column assignment was very frustrating but ended up being extremely simple. Thanks to OnenOnlyWalter for the original code:

function onEdit() { 
    var s = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet(); // Get spreadsheet name 
    var r = s.getActiveCell(); // store active cell name in current spreadsheet 
  var cell1 = 9 // This is the row I want to put values
  if(r.getRow() != cell1) { // Ignores this row (where I put the dates)
    var column = r.getColumn();  // Get column # from active cell
    var time = new Date(); // Get date and time of last mod
    time = Utilities.formatDate(time, "GMT-08:00", "MM/DD/yy, hh:mm:ss"); // Format date and time
    SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet().getRange(cell1,column).setValue(time); // put in time in cell
  };
 };