Selecting/highlighting next adjacent cell in row a

Question

I am not really experienced with coding so I apologize in advance if this is a stupid question with an obvious answer...

I use a google sheet to keep track of things at work, and my employees use it multiple times a day. They will either type one of three phrases into a certain cell on a row, so I have created buttons using the drawing feature that they can simply click, which will insert the appropriate text into the highlighted cell.

Once this text is inserted into the cell, I would like to add something to the end of the function that automatically selects the next adjacent cell in the row (to the right) so they can continue typing in. Currently, once they click the button to insert text into one cell (e.g., B23) they have to use the mouse to manually select C23 before typing into that cell. For some reason you cannot use the right arrow key or tab key on the keyboard to move over, so I am wondering if there is a way to add the selecting process into the script (or even a workaround for allowing the tab or right arrow keys to work).

I realize this may seem like a tedious question and folks may think it is awfully lazy of me to ask for a more efficient way to move over to a cell than using the mouse, but my employees use the sheet hundreds of times a day, so I'd really like to maximize the efficiency for them to make it as easy and convenient as possible. Inputting data can be tedious enough, so I am trying to simplify things and make it as least painful as possible :)

Thanks so much!

Answer 1

There are several ways to select the cell at the right. One way is to use offset(rowOffset,columnOffset):

range.offset(0,1)

Answer 2

You are correct. When using a button the focus stays in the button when it is clicked. After some trial and error, I think I found a way that will work fot you. I created a html sidebar that is opened from a custom menu. Once opened, you can leave it opened, HTML allows control over the focus using 'google.script.host.editor.focus()'. Then you can type in the cell. Attached is my sample spreadsheet you can copy and try. Let me know if you need any help changing the button names or text. Sorry my first try didn't work correctly. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KlNSJnZDNIb2chUK3SlKJg79VNIrsAbIbUvHyLwTLWk/edit?usp=sharing