Question 264065 in Javascript Question posted in
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Javascript – Excel Office Script setInterval not working

I want to recalculate an Excel worksheet every 1 second using Office Script. Here is my failed attempt.

function sendMessage(sheet: ExcelScript.Worksheet) {
  console.log('hi');
  sheet.calculate(true);
}

function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) {
    let sheet = workbook.getActiveWorksheet();
    setInterval(sendMessage, 1000, sheet);
}

Nothing printed at the console and there is no recalculation.

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    I’m not familiar with offise-js, but following general principles I can guess what the sheet variable have no proper value on the timer event. You need to define it globally (if possible) or get the sheet inside sendMessage.

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  2. 0

    I helped develop the Office Script runtime.

    Generally, Office Scripts are designed to execute a sequence of steps and complete. i.e. Office Scripts aren’t designed to continually run in the background.

    Currently setInterval won’t work due to how Office Scripts are executed, additionally only a single Office Script can execute at a time.

    Generally, I wouldn’t recommend continually running an Office Script (the runtime isn’t designed to support it).

    That said,

    I have used busy waiting in the past to create a delay, which you could use to pause between calls. See sleep function below:

    https://github.com/wandyezj/office-script/blob/main/functions/sleep.ts

    
function sleep(seconds: number) {

  const millisecondDelay = seconds * 1000
  const start = Date.now()
  let now = Date.now();

  while((now - start) < millisecondDelay) {
    now = Date.now();
    // busy wait
    for (let i = 0; i < 1000; i++){}
  }

}
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