In Google Spreadsheets, if cell A > cell B, replace Cell B with Cell A - excel

Question

I currently have a column labeled "Current Rank" in column A, and a column labeled "Highest Rank" in column B. If current rank > highest rank, I'd like to replace highest rank with current rank. Is there any way to do this while getting around the self-reference errors?

Answer 1

You can list all the scores and use the formula =max() to find the biggest one, but to actually replace the cell "B" with the bigger value, the only way is with a script, Google's version of Excel macros. You'd have to make something like this, and run it after you put in the new values (this is my first google script, there is most certainly cleaner way, but this code gets the job done)
function myFunction() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var sheet = ss.getSheets()[0];
var range=sheet.getRange("A1:A100")
var j=0;
for(var i in range){
if(range.getValues()[j]!=undefined){
if(sheet.getRange("B" + (j+1)).getValue()<range.getValues()[j][0]){
sheet.getRange("B" + (j+1)).setValue(range.getValues()[j][0]);
}
}
j++;
}
}
To make a script, open tools>script editor.

Answer 2

You need a script, but this is not a hard one.
An onEdit trigger is a little cleaner, works automatically. Open the editor via tools, paste this into an empty file. You're done. This script will evaluate column a and column b every time a change is made on the sheet.
Enter data into column A, and the max result will appear in column B (this script assumes there is a header row, data on row 1 won't get evaluated.)
function onEdit(e) {
var ss = e.source;
var sheet = ss.getActiveSheet();
var range = sheet.getDataRange();
var values = range.getValues();
for(var i = 1; i < values.length; i++) {
if (values[i][0] > values[i][1]) {
sheet.getRange(i + 1, 2, 1, 1).setValue(values[i][0]);
}
}
}