Select columns by name rather than letter in Google Query Language (GQL) with Google Spreadsheets?

Question

newbie question, is it possible to select columns by name rather than letter when using Google Query Language with Google Spreadsheets?

This works fine for me: \"S

Answer 1

A little simpler:

SELECT "&SUBSTITUTE(ADDRESS(1,MATCH("student",Sheet1!A1:B1,0),4),1,"")&", COUNT("&SUBSTITUTE(ADDRESS(1,MATCH("detention",Sheet1!A1:B1,0),4),1,"")&") GROUP BY "&SUBSTITUTE(ADDRESS(1,MATCH("student",Sheet1!A1:B1,0),4),1,"")

• Example in Google Sheets
• Detailed explanation

Answer 2

I found that when you use IMPORTRANGE function on external ranges it converts from a letter to a column number, and will help you in this matter.

I've wanted to select a column based on its field name, but the problem for me was that the column to look at was likely to change in the future. So what I did was use the MATCH function to identify the column, so it looks something like

=QUERY(IMPORTRANGE("spreadsheet url","NamedRange"),"SELECT Col"&MATCH("FieldName",FieldNameRowAddress/RangeName,FALSE)")

The funny thing is you have to allow permission to access itself.

I've named my ranges that I'm importing to make it even more future proof.

Answer 3

This is currently not possible. The GQL documentation states[1] "Columns are referenced by the identifiers (not by labels). For example, in a Google Spreadsheet, column identifiers are the one or two character column letter (A, B, C, ...)."

If you want to do this in a spreadsheet it is possible with the following formula to convert a column header name into a letter (some tweaking might be required +1 (might be +2)). It also relies on column headers being unique and not containing commas

=REGEXEXTRACT(ADDRESS(1,COUNTA(SPLIT(LEFT(JOIN(",",TRANSPOSE(1:1)),FIND("your_column_name",JOIN(",",TRANSPOSE(1:1)))),","))+1,4);"[a-zA-Z]+")

[1] https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/querylanguage#Select