Google Apps Script is one of those tools that looks boring until it saves you from doing the same spreadsheet chore for the 80th time.

Here are ten places I reach for it.

Automate emails from Google Sheets

Send invoices, confirmations, reminders, or follow-ups from rows in a sheet. MailApp and GmailApp are usually enough to get started.

Generate QR codes

Create QR codes for items, events, check-ins, or internal labels, then save the images back to Drive or a Sheet.

Convert Google Sheets to PDF

Turn a sheet or report tab into a PDF and save it to Drive. Useful for recurring reports that should not require manual exporting.

Automate data entry

Move data between tabs, clean imported rows, fill templates, or normalize messy form responses. This is where Apps Script pays for itself.

Create custom menus and sidebars

Add a menu item to a Sheet or Doc so a workflow feels like part of the file instead of a separate script nobody remembers to run.

Use triggers

Run a script on a schedule or when a file changes. This is great for daily reports, cleanup jobs, and alerting when a sheet gets updated.

Create Google Forms

Build or update forms programmatically when the questions come from another data source.

Connect to APIs

Pull data from Google Analytics, internal tools, or third-party services with UrlFetchApp, then drop the results into a Sheet.

Extract data from websites

Fetch public pages and parse the pieces you need. It is not a replacement for a real scraper, but for small jobs it works.

Create custom functions

Write your own spreadsheet functions for calculations you repeat often.

Apps Script is not glamorous. That is why I like it. It sits close to the spreadsheets people already use and quietly removes annoying manual steps.