Google Apps Script close spreadsheets programmatically

Question

Google lists a maximum of 50 concurrent users allowed edit permission at once in a shared spreadsheet

https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2494827?hl=en&rd=1

I've got a Google Spreadsheet that will have a large number of potential editors at any moment and am concerned about idle users filling up the 50 cap and blocking edits from fresh logons. There's a lot of interaction with the data that discourages me from using Forms submissions, and there would be a large bound script to the document.

Is there an idle timeout function that can be called through the spreadsheet's bound script that will close the document or set an idle user to view only status? This is in a Google Apps for Business domain.

Answer 1

This is a question that was asked very often 6 years ago on the old Google product forum when I began to work with Google spreadsheets.

Strangely the question disappeared after a while and never came back (until today !)

There are two main reasons for this question to disappear :

1. Since Google spreadsheets are a representation of a documents hosted on a distant server, we can not interact with what happens in another user browser from a script that runs on this distant server
2. I suppose this is rarely an issue and that in most case it was mainly a theoretical question that vanished in real use. (but that is really a supposition, I admit...)

As far as I know there is no practical solution to avoid that situation.