This Google Script page says that stackoverflow is the place to post Google Script questions, so here I am.
I want to use a Google Script to automatically send text messages (SMS) to all cell phone numbers in a Google Spreadsheet.
It is possible to send e-mails to all e-mail addresses in a spreadsheet by following this tutorial but when I try using phone numbers in a spreadsheet in place of e-mail addresses I get an error that those are not valid e-mail addresses. Fair enough. If I knew the cell phone companies tied to each of those cell phone numbers I could convert those phone numbers into e-mail addresses (a common option with several guides explaining it, like this one) but I don't have that cell phone provider information.
I am certainly not the first person to try to automatically send text messages from a computer rather than a cell phone. This question is one of the more popular (but also older) questions asking about it. Twilio pops up in several answers I've looked through but that is not a free service (although it is pretty inexpensive, I will admit.) Google has free options, though, so I figured I'd try those. Google Voice can send free text messages and you can even send free text messages through Gmail.
I know that many have searched for an API to use Google services to send text messages and there doesn't seem to be one. There are some interesting projects like google-voice-java but these are more work arounds than anything.
Thus I figured I'd just use one Google service (a Google Docs spreadsheet) to call another (Google Voice or GMail) through the use of a 3rd (Google Script). Is there some way to do this? Is there a way to get a Google Script to send text messages? For example, the MailApp.sendEmail
sends e-mails - is there one to send text messages (SMS)? If not, can MailApp.sendEmail
be massaged/jury rigged to send texts (without needing to turn the phone number into an e-mail address like [phonenumber]@txt.att.net)? Could some other scripting option be used, perhaps related to Google Chat (since the GMail texting option is related to Google Chat)?