Onedit Script Not Firing

Question

So I'm pretty new when it comes to scripts. In the past I was able to get a small script to work, but that was an isolated event and it was mostly copy/pasting anyway. I'm working in a google sheets. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish:

I want my sheet to Hide/Show certain columns based on the content of a single cell, C3. I was able to find a script that should be working based on this post, but no matter what I do the script isn't affecting any changes to my sheet. Below is my modified version of the script. The main difference is that Omar only wanted 3 separate views, whereas I want 13, one for each calendar month and one that displays all. I'll include 3 cases for spaces sake.

function onEdit(e) {

var sheet = e.source.getActiveSheet();
if (e.range.getA1Notation() !== 'C3' || sheet.getName() !== 'Overview') return;
switch (e.value) {
case 'All':
    sheet.showColumns(1, sheet.getMaxColumns()-1)
    break;
case 'January':
    sheet.showColumns(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 26, 27)
    sheet.hideColumns(6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
    break;
case 'February':
    sheet.showColumns(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
    sheet.hideColumns(8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27)
    break;
}
}

I feel like the script should be working, and perhaps I missed some small implementation step. Any help?

Answer 1

Short answer

onEdit(e) appears that doesn't run but what is happening is that it has errors.

Explanation

The code use unsupported syntax for showColumns and hideColumns, so its execution is interrupted.

The syntax of showColumns is showColumns(columnIndex) or showColumns(columnIndex, numColumns). The syntax for hideColumns is similar. For details and examples see https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/spreadsheet/sheet

On How can I test a trigger function in GAS? it's explained how to debug trigger functions.

Cooper mention on his answer that he posted a code that do something similar about what you are trying to achieve and also alert about the restrictions of simple triggers. Note that hiding/showing rows/columns is slow and that a simple trigger has a 30 seconds execution time limit. The way to overcome this limit is to use an installable trigger, but maybe your case is simple enough to be solved without using an auxiliary function and installable trigger.

Here is a change that you could made for the January case.

case 'January':
    sheet.showColumns(1, 5);  // show columns from column A to column E
    sheet.showColumns(26, 2); // show columns from column Z to column AA
    sheet.hideColumns(6, 19);  // hide columns from column F to column X
    break;

I let you to figure out by yourself the February case.

Answer 2

I did something similar to this recently you can take a look at it here. Also hiding a lot of columns can take time so be aware of these restrictions.

function onEdit(e) {

var sheet = e.source.getActiveSheet();
if (e.range.getA1Notation() !== 'C3' || sheet.getName() !== 'Overview') return;
switch (e.value) {
case 'All':
    sheet.showColumns(1, sheet.getLastColumn()-1);
    break;
case 'January':
    //refer to my link above for creating a function like this
    break;
case 'February':
    //refer to link again
    break;
}
}