Google Sheets — Find cell

Google Sheets — Find cell

Type: googlesheets-find-cell  ·  Package: Google Sheets Activities v1.0.5  ·  Output: Dictionary<string,object>

Searches the sheet for a value and returns the location of the first matching cell. It is Google Sheets’ “Find” from the robot: locate a label (“Total”), a code or a marker to read or write next to it.

How it works

Reads the sheet sheet (the first one if empty), or only the given range, and goes through the cells row by row, left to right, comparing their text with value according to match-type. Returns the first match.

• The comparison is case-insensitive and uses the text displayed in the cell (a number formatted as 1,500 is compared as "1,500").
• row and column are absolute in the sheet, even when you search a range that does not start at A1.

Required parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
value	object	—	Value to find; compared as text.

Optional parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
session	ZoanGoogleSheetsSession	—	Session from Google Sheets — Open. Inside Open’s body it is inherited and you can leave it empty.
sheet	string	—	Sheet to search. If empty, the first sheet is used.
range	string	—	Limits the search to a range in A1 notation (e.g. A1:Z100). Default: the whole sheet.
match-type	string	exact	Comparison: exact (cell equals the value), contains (cell contains the value) or starts-with (cell starts with the value).

Output

Returns a Dictionary with the first match, or null if there is none (or the sheet is empty):

Key	Type	Content
address	string	A1 address of the cell, e.g. C7.
row	int	Row number (1 = first row of the sheet).
column	int	Column number (1 = column A).
value	string	Full text of the matching cell.

Common errors

Message	Cause and fix
'value' is required.	value is empty or its expression returned null.
No Google Sheets session available. Provide 'session' from a googlesheets-open activity, or place this activity inside the Open activity's body …	The activity is outside Open’s body and received no session. Move it inside the body or pass the saved session.
The spreadsheet has no sheets to read.	sheet and range are empty and the document has no sheets.
The service sheets has thrown an exception. HttpStatusCode is …	Google rejected the call: missing sheet or range, no access, expired token or quota exceeded. See Google API errors.

Not finding the value is not an error: the output is null.

Example

Find a code and mark its row as processed in column F:

Google Sheets — Find cell   session = book   sheet = "Orders"   value = code   → output: cell
If   condition = !isNull(cell)
 └─ then:
      Google Sheets — Write cell   session = book   sheet = "Orders"
                                   cell = "F" + cell["row"]   value = "Processed"
      Log   message = "Code found at " + cell["address"]

Check whether something was found

Validate with isNull(cell) before reading its keys, so you do not fail when the value does not exist.

Related activities

• Find row — find a whole row by one column.
• Read cell — read a cell at a known position.