Issue Moving Large Amounts of Rows to Another sheet

rankinallen

We have a few archive sheets that we have to empty every few months by creating a new backup sheet and manually moving the rows into that new sheet. We move the rows instead of copying to maintain all of the cell history (it's saved us a lot in the past). We also refrain from making new sheets to replace the current Archive sheets because we have a lot of automation and custom applications that are wired to those current Archive sheets. So it's just easier to create a new Backup Archive sheet, and manually move rows into that.

Now, for over a year I've been able to move 500-800 rows at a time (any more and I usually get an error, like Timeout). That is, until very recently when I began getting a different error, stating that a row was already in the process of moving, or was already moved to another sheet. Yet, it was the first time attempting to move the selected rows. Any additional attempts to move came back with the same error.

I began selecting less and less from 500 to 200, which worked for 2 moves before getting the error. So I paired it down to about 100 and the same thing occurred, I was able to move a batch of rows once and then got an error. Eventually, I was only able to move about 10 at a time and I had to stop. I tried selecting a different section of rows in the sheet and the same error shows up. These Archive sheets have hit the 500,000 cell limit with upwards of 15,000 rows so we have to empty them into a Backup Archive, but this error makes moving all of these rows impossible because of how much data is in the sheet.

I submitted a bug report, but it mentions that a follow-up may not happen for a few more days, so I'm curious if anyone else has encountered this as well.

Jaime Ciabattoni

@rankinallen When I have to do large backups, I actually copy the sheet and save it as a new one. I then turn off any workflows in that new sheet to make sure I don't get errors or cause confusion.

Then in the active sheet, I can just delete the rows rather than having to move them. Perhaps that would be an easier process than moving so many rows?

~Jaime

rankinallen

We have done this in the past, but the reason why I want to refrain from copying the rows and them deleting them is so we can keep the cell history. Copying a row doesn't keep this, but moving does.

sheetsmartsarah

Did you ever find out how to resolve the issue? I'm running into a similar issue.

Toufong Vang

I've recently manually, moved as much as 1,500 rows at a time without issue. Once initiated, the process takes a few minutes to complete. Trying to move the same rows again will result in the error above.

An alternative is to create an automation to move the rows and then manually run/trigger it.

Note that--in addition to the 500,000 cell limit--the maximum number of rows a sheet can contain is 20,000.