I’m working with a massive Google Sheets document that has around 3000 rows containing book data like ISBN numbers, authors, titles, and genres. I need to create a script that can search for a specific ISBN value and return which row it’s located in.
My goal is to build a simple interface where users can input an ISBN and a quantity. When they click submit, the script should locate that ISBN in the spreadsheet and update a counter in the same row.
The main challenge I’m facing is efficiently searching for the ISBN value without having to load the entire dataset into memory. I’ve seen some solutions where people convert everything to arrays and loop through each element, but this approach seems really slow for large datasets.
Is there a built-in method or more efficient way to search for a specific value in Google Sheets and get its row position? I feel like I’m missing something obvious here. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
just use the built-in filter function with apps script - something like =filter(row(a:a), a:a=your_isbn) will give you the exact row number without loading data into memory. way simpler than match or query functions and handles large datasets pretty well in my experience.
Had this exact problem building an inventory tracker for my business. MATCH function is your best friend - way faster than array loops on large datasets. Use =MATCH(search_value, range, 0) to find the row position directly. For your script, try getRange().createTextFinder(isbn).findNext() - it’s surprisingly efficient since it doesn’t load everything into memory at once. Tested this on a 5000-row sheet and got under 2 seconds vs 15+ seconds with array methods. Pro tip: sort your data by ISBN if you can, then use binary search for even better performance. TextFinder’s worked reliably for me across different sheet sizes without the memory overhead you’re worried about.
I’ve handled similar datasets in my accounting work. Apps Script’s Range.getValues() with chunking works way better than you’d expect. Don’t load all 3000 rows - process them in 500-row chunks using offset parameters. Keeps memory usage down and beats individual cell lookups. You can also use the QUERY function in your script: =QUERY(A:D,“SELECT * WHERE A=‘your_isbn’”) handles the search server-side instead of in your script. For production, add an index column that updates when data changes. Then use standard lookup functions against a sorted reference. I’ve used chunk processing across different Google Workspace setups without hitting timeouts.