Back in March 2011 I published Export Twitter Followers and Friends using a Google Spreadsheet. One of the problems with this solution is if you were trying to import a lot of friends or followers users would get the error message “Exceeded absolute-time timeout in milliseconds”. This is because there is a limitation to the amount of execution time each Google Apps Script gets.
Following feedback from users (the nature of my work is perpetual beta so if something isn’t working out for you just ask 😉 I’ve come up with a workaround. If you have already setup the original export friend/follower spreadsheet you need to open it and select Tools > Script editor… and paste the following code into it and save.
To use this new code you need to enter the following information directly into the script editor where prompted:
- sheetName – sheet name you want to import the data to;
- friendOrFo – whether you want ‘friends’ or ‘followers’; and
- optScreenName – the screen name of the person
To run the script Run > getLotsOfFriendAndFo manually as many times as needed (the script will import 100 friends/followers at a time) or if you want to go away and make a cup of tea use Triggers > Current project triggers and add getLotsOfFriendAndFo as a time-driven function to run every minute (once you’ve finished your tea best to delete this trigger).
If something goes wrong during the import you can start over manually deleting any data and running resetGetLotsOfFriendAndFo (this resets the cursor used with the Twitter API).
Any additional comments welcome 😉