Maximum number of cross-sheet references per sheet

@Marino Anderson · 06/13/19

This unpleasant scaling limitation reminds me distinctly of the Btrieve page-based record manager used to track mortgages in 1991 (I think the app was called Bank Star). This ancient system sewed pages of data together to form an emulated flat file! When the indexes broke, we were left with a pile of meaningless pages. Broken indexes rendered the system worthless every couple of weeks as the mortgage volume scaled. Imagine, we used DOS, Novell Netware, and 4mb network cards.

Good thing I had this terrible experience as I am now 'sewing' multiple sheets together via a manual pivot table to extract summary data.

Bottom line, SmartSheet is great for smaller projects, tracking under 2K items, and presenting limited dashboards. However SmartSheet is unconditionally impossible to scale.

Bren Colombus · 07/30/19

Ugh. I've just hit the "100 Cross Sheet References" wall with the same disheartening thud as the others in this thread have described. It seems so arbitrary. Can it not be changed??

Andrée Starå · 08/04/19

Hi everyone,

Please submit an Enhancement Request when you have a moment to have your vote added

A New Way to Submit Your Feature Requests

To make your Enhancement / Feature Request count, send in the form above because there isn’t a guarantee, it will be registered otherwise.

Original Post: https://community.smartsheet.com/announcement/new-way-submit-your-feature-requests

Have a fantastic day!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Josh Garcia · 08/05/19

Done!

Adina Foley · 02/12/20

Sorry but one stupid question, can someone define what a distinct cross-sheet reference is? Is that any formula that references another sheet? And how does that count when I copy the formula into the whole column?

I am worried that I might hit the limit of 100 and want to make sure I build my sheet correctly.

Thanks

Adina

Mike McNamara · 02/12/20

This 2 hour wait period does not work. I have a sheet where I deleted columns of references. The sheet now has only 40 references in it. I am unable too add a new reference, waiting over 24 hours.

Only workaround is to create a new sheets fr0mo scratch and make sure each one will not have more than 100 before I lay out the column designs. Creates a real issue when you might want to expand one of these sheets later. Need to leave some sort of arbitrary head room for that possibility.

Not happy to have to redo essentially hours of work.

Sam Hilsman · 10/15/20

I ran into the exact same problem, among a myriad of other problems with SmartSheet (can't limit a cell to numbers, no conditional logic on update forms, the list goes on).

The funny thing is that Andrée Starå goes into every single discussion for these unresolved issues and suggested putting in an enhancement request. Some of these issues go back two years.

Nothing has been done. Clearly SmartSheet is more interested in attaining new customers than retaining the ones they currently have.

DEPLORABLE.

Tobias Fuchs · 01/10/22

Hello dear SmaSh-Team!

I have run into the exact same error now again in 2022 :D

Could you give an rough estimation if and yes, when this issue could be solved?

And at a more practical note: I did delete about 20 cross-sheet-references by copy-pasting as Values for old Cross-sheet-references that wont change anymore. So I thought I will get now 20 more cross-sheet-references to go as my limit should be reduced by 20. But I still get the same error.

Please help!

Thanks and best

Tobi

Amy Foeller · 01/20/22

I run into this error a LOT. The cell reference limit NEEDS to be increased.

I have a sheet with formulas looking at another sheet with 9,200 rows of data in it. I need to look at 11 different columns in the source sheet. The formulas don't work (even through they are written correctly) because 9,200 x 11 = 101,222 total external cell references.

It's very frustrating to have to continually pare down my data into smaller and smaller (and less manageable) chunks because smartsheet can't handle moderate amounts of data.

J Roberts · 08/30/22

I've come across the same error with the same frustration as the previous commenters. I've nearly completed the cross-referencing on a sheet and got this error.

Has there been any update on this issue? ...or work around?

Frank Falco · 09/19/22

I have hit this limit too.

I agree it seems low given the other limits in place.

Is there any movement on this, it is a show stopper for me.

Charlie T. · 03/13/23

Hi Everyone.

Well advanced into 2023, and this ongoing limitation (problem) remains for more than four years. No effective workarounds nor enhancement requests were answered while people kept bumping into this 100 cross-reference issue after several hours of work lost. Not looking for a solution which I already found out there is not. Just putting here my frustration

Charlie

lkiefer · 03/31/23

Running into this issue too! Can't believe there isn't a fix. Hours down the drain and now I have to split my sheets into multiple. Hoping this changes soon!

Erik L · 04/04/24

I also feel the 100 reference limit is bad. I am building a spend-down balance sheet for our grants and have hit this limit. We should not have to split everything up into separate sheets. We have more grants incoming and I can not combine them on the same sheet which is bad. It is also pretty sad that these comments are from the last few years and still this is a issue

Maximum number of cross-sheet references per sheet

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