Changing the Spelling of Contact's Names...contact displays one spelling while sheet has another

Haywardc

Hi all!

I am having an issue editing two of my contact's names. When they are listed within the sheet in a cell, one name is in all caps and the other has the last name spelled wrong.

I have gone in on my end and changed the spelling and capitalization which works for a second, but as soon as I click save and exit it reverts back to the misspelling and all caps form. I have also had the individuals whose names they are go in on their end and edit their profile. However, their profile reflects their names correctly and when they retype them their names are still reflected wrong in the sheet cells.

Is there an area of contact editing that I am missing? I feel like I have tried everything I have seen online!

Any tips are much appreciated, thanks!!

Genevieve P.

Hi @Haywardc

It sounds like what's happening here is a difference between the Name set in a user's Smartsheet Account (in their Personal Profile) and a Contact Name that you can apply in a sheet or in your personal contacts. I like to think of the second one as a nick-name, because it's not associated with their account name.

If these contacts were invited in to your company's plan and you're a System Admin for your organization, you can manage their Account Name from the Admin Center. (See: Admin Center: Add, edit, or delete users) This is the same as when you asked them to change their name in their Profile.

If you're then seeing something different in the cells in your sheet, this may be because a "nickname" was applied to that contact, where the name has been edited in the sheet, adjusting how they're seen in the cells.

See: Tips and best practices for using contacts

"The names you select for your contacts will appear when you assign tasks to them in Contact List columns. However, in other areas such as the Sharing list, the name displayed will be pulled from the user's Smartsheet account. "

For example, if you edit this value in the sheet itself, this applies a nickname to that contact:

One way to ensure consistent names is to add the contacts to the actual Contact Column as a dropdown option. This will show them as their Account Name:

However keep in mind that any previous cell values that had a contact nickname will retain that name, and only new selections moving forward will use the real Account name:

That said, you can use find-and-replace to update all nicknames back to the real name.

From:

To:

I hope that helps!

Cheers,

Genevieve