Google Sheets auto-timestamp script builder

Say which column to watch and which column gets the time; get the Apps Script, ready to paste. The script on every blog is the same four lines with somebody else's columns hard-coded into them — and the four questions under every copy (my column is D · it overwrites my created date · it stamps the header · it fires on every tab) are each one changed line. This page changes the right lines for you.

Set your columns, then hit Build.

You'll get the script, where to paste it, and a table of exactly what it does — stamp by stamp:

function onEdit(e) {
  if (e.range.getColumn() !== 2) return;
  e.range.offset(0, 1).setValue(new Date()).setNumberFormat('M/d/yyyy HH:mm');
}

Nothing is sent anywhere but this page, and nothing is stored.

Why there is nothing to configure

Apps Script has a short list of simple triggers — functions that run on their name alone. A function called onEdit runs on every hand edit of the spreadsheet it belongs to, with no trigger setup and no authorization prompt for writes into that same spreadsheet. That is the whole wiring: paste, save, done.

The same fact sets the limits. A hand edit means a person typing or pasting — a formula recalculating does not fire it, another script writing does not fire it, and a Google Forms response landing in the sheet does not fire it (that one wants an installable onFormSubmit trigger). And the stamp lands in the spreadsheet's own time zone, set under File → Settings, which on a shared sheet is not always the editor's.

Seeing it done

The channel installs this exact script on camera — Extensions → Apps Script, the paste, the save — and then edits the sheet and watches the stamp land, including the beat where an edit in the wrong column correctly does nothing. The default script this page emits is the one that runs there.