Formatting numbers read from spreadsheet

Question

I\'m writing a script that creates fixed-width-text output of the contents of a Google Apps Spreadsheet. I retrieve all the values of the current range using the range

Answer 1

As of December 2015, the kludgy work-arounds can be discarded. Google has provided two methods to retrieve the literal string display values from cells. They haven't provided documentation yet, so here's a summary:

Range.getDisplayValue()
Returns the display value of the top-left cell in the range, as a String, containing the text value shown on the Sheets UI. Empty cells will return an empty string.

Range.getDisplayValues()
Returns the rectangular grid of display values for this range. Returns a two-dimensional array of Strings, indexed by row, then by column. Empty cells will be represented by an empty string in the array. Remember that while a range index starts at 1, 1, the JavaScript array will be indexed from [0][0].

Example:

Say we have a range in a spreadsheet that we are interested in, like this:

Those four cells include two of the trickiest formats to work around; date/time and scientific notation. But with the new methods, there's nothing to it.

function demoDisplayValue() {
  var range = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet().getRange("A1:B2");

  Logger.log( range.getDisplayValue() );
  Logger.log( range.getDisplayValues() );
}

Log:

[16-01-14 13:04:15:864 EST] 1/14/2016 0:00:00
[16-01-14 13:04:15:865 EST] [[1/14/2016 0:00:00, 5.13123E+35], [$3.53, 1,123 lb]]