Why is google apps spreadsheet setValue function not setting values in cells?

Question

Why can't I use setValues in google apps spreadsheets API to set the values of cells in a spreadsheet?

I entered the correct cell and the value seems ok. however nothing appears in the cells! I used the following to create the rows after the first row in my sheet.

sheet.insertRowsAfter(1,15);

After which I did this

sheet.setActiveCell("C2").setValue("AAA");

Answer 1

The problem is that you need to get the range before you can set values into it. Your code should be:

sheet.getRange("c2").setValue("AAA");

This difference between GAS and VBA took me a little while to get used to. You have to "get your hands on" a range before you can alter or set its values.

Answer 2

I found the answer to this question my self and wanted to preventing others from having the same problem.

Google aps api will set the default font color of a new cell to what ever the color above it is. I used white on blue color for my description column. The white font color propagated but not the background resulting in white on white color. I finaly found this and corrected it by setting cell fontcolor using

setFontColor("#000000");