Sorting google-sheet values by cells color directly in Apps Script

Question

Early this year (i think) Google released the functionality to sort (and filter) by colors in google-sheet.

I wanna use this feature in my sheets, but all my sorts ar

Answer 1

I believe your goal as follows.

• You want to sort the range by the background color of the cells using Google Apps Script.

Issue and workaround:

Unfortunately, in the current stage, it seems that sort(sortSpecObj) of Class Range cannot sort by the background colors of cells. But when Sheets API is used, I thought that your goal can be achieved. In this answer, as a workaround, I would like to propose to use "SortRangeRequest" of the method of "spreadsheets.batchUpdate" in Sheets API.

The flow of this sample script is as follows.

1. Retrieve the background colors from the cells.
2. Create the request body for using the batchUpdate method of Sheets API.
3. Request to Sheets API using the request body.

Sample script:

The sample script is as follows. Please copy and paste the following script to the script editor of the container-bound script of Spreadsheet. And please enable Sheets API at Advanced Google services. By this, Sheets API can be used with Google Apps Script.

function myFunction() {
  const sheetName = "Sheet1";  // Please set the sheet name.
  const a1Notation = "A1:C10"; // Please set the sort range as a1Notation.

  // 1. Retrieve the background colors from the cells.
  const ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  const sheet = ss.getSheetByName(sheetName);
  const range = sheet.getRange(a1Notation);
  const backgrounds = range.getBackgroundObjects();
  
  // 2. Create the request body for using the batchUpdate method of Sheets API.
  const backgroundColors = Object.values(
    backgrounds.reduce((o, [a]) => {
      const rgb = a.asRgbColor();
      return Object.assign(o, {[rgb.asHexString()]: {red: rgb.getRed() / 255, green: rgb.getGreen() / 255, blue: rgb.getBlue() / 255}})
    }, {})
  );
  const startRow = range.getRow() - 1;
  const startColumn = range.getColumn() - 1;
  const srange = {
    sheetId: sheet.getSheetId(),
    startRowIndex: startRow,
    endRowIndex: startRow + range.getNumRows(),
    startColumnIndex: startColumn,
    endColumnIndex: startColumn + range.getNumColumns()
  };
  const requests = [
    {sortRange: {range: srange, sortSpecs: [{dimensionIndex: 0, sortOrder: "ASCENDING"}]}},
    {sortRange: {range: srange, sortSpecs: backgroundColors.map(rgb => ({backgroundColor: rgb}))}}
  ];
  
  // 3. Request to Sheets API using the request body.
  Sheets.Spreadsheets.batchUpdate({requests: requests}, ss.getId());
}

• In this sample, before the sort of background color is run, the column "A" is sorted with "ASCENDING".

Result:

When above script is used, the following result can be obtained.

Note:

• If you want to set the order of colors, please set the array for sortSpecs like sortSpecs: [{backgroundColor: rgb1}, {backgroundColor: rgb2}, {backgroundColor: rgb3},,,].

References:

• sort(sortSpecObj)
• Method: spreadsheets.batchUpdate
• SortRangeRequest