Gathering all the unique values from one column and outputting them in another column..?

Question

I have this form of a spreadsheet:

 A   B   C  D
abc abc abc 1
def ghi jkl 1
mno pqr stu 3
vwx yza bcd 4
mno pqr stu 5
mno pqr stu 5
vwx yza bcd 5
mno pqr st         


        

Answer 1

You can do that inside google-spreadsheets with the UNIQUE function.
Here is the doc to all available functions.
(You find UNIQUE in the Filter category)

Most likely you want to insert into cell E1:

=UNIQUE(D1:D)

This will populate column E with the unique values from all of column D while preserving the order. Furthermore this will dynamically update and reflect all changes made to column D.

To do that from within google-apps-script:

SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet()
 .getRange("E1").setFormula("=UNIQUE(D1:D)");