**NOW AVAILABLE!** Change column names without disrupting reports

Allegra Silcox

Hi Community, 

In a coming enhancement, reports will be more resilient to changes, automatically connecting renamed sheet columns so you don’t have to lift a finger. We will update this post when it’s live!

An icon on your report column will alert you if columns have been connected, so you can drill in to see what’s changed. You can then rename the column or choose to disconnect them if you’d prefer to report them separately.

All users on all plan types benefit from this change; learn more to get started!

You can also stay informed by Subscribe to receive product release updates for curated news of recently released product capabilities and enhancements for the platform of your choosing, delivered to your inbox. As new releases occur, you will receive a daily email with news of what's released. (Emails will only send daily, Monday-Friday, as new releases are available).

Keep reporting,

Allegra Silcox

Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Smartsheet, Lately Webinar 

Join us on Feb. 16 for our live Smartsheet, Lately webinar where the Product Marketing Team will take a deep dive into the top releases from the past quarter, featuring this reporting enhancement.

Register here

MMiles

What a great enhancement! Thank you Smartsheet!

When getting updated external reports and someone changes a header column 😵.... I no longer have to worry about breaking reports when updating these new column headers in my existing Smartsheets, everything will work like magic. 🧙‍♂️

MCorbin

If you're a fan of "The Chosen", then you know what I mean by this....

"There's that word again... "Soon"...."

This one can't come soon enough 😃

Genevieve P.

@MCorbin when "soon" arrives...

https://media.giphy.com/media/odRng8kTZZuiFJ22dn/giphy.gif

kmoseman

Outstanding, I was wondering when this feature was going to be added!

Lucas Rayala

Hi @Allegra Silcox, excited to see this. Just to be clear, when the column name changes in the sheet, the data will still update in the associated report column even if you don't rename the report's column name. Meaning you can keep the old name and it will function smoothly, correct?

Allegra Silcox

Good news, community! This feature is now generally available; learn more to get started!

Mike Wilday

HALLELUJAH... This is a huge improvement!!! Thank you!

Meg Y

Game changing!!! Lots of reports and so little time.

Steve Reed

I agree that this long-awaited enhancement is a great step! Now I can change column names without breaking the associated reporting...

HOWEVER, after digging into this a bit in the past couple of days, this is not quite the home run that I had expected. Some questions about the enhancement as it currently exists:

• Unfortunately, this is not a seamless process. You can't just change the column name and walk away. While it doesn't break reporting, it does require some manual intervention in the report. You can choose to update the report column name (or not).
• The complexity of this enhancement increases exponentially if the column name that you want to change is used in the report filter. That is further complicated if you have multiple sheets included in the report. What happens if you only change the column name on 5 of 15 sheets that drive a specific report?

Again, I applaud the delivery of this functionality, but I am also hoping that there is more development to come on it. I would be happy to participate in any discussions with the product team and share more details on my concerns.

Cassi

Thank you for the update! This is a game-changer.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Allegra Silcox

I hope you're well and safe!

Game changer! Thanks!

https://media.giphy.com/media/tBb19eTTI6Kgj44KtmE/giphy.gif

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Stacy Meadows

When will this be?? as this will save me a lot of headache ☺️

Andrée Starå

Hi @Stacy Meadows

It's already been released.

Don't you see it?

Be safe, and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Mattisphere

Definitely not working for me. I didn't even realize this was a thing. I changed a column name from percentage complete to percent complete and it broke all of the reports. I had to go in and manually update the report column setting in every report (percentage complete showed all the way at the bottom with a red exclamation and just said the column couldn't be found), plus I had to update any reports where that was a filter because the filter didn't work. I only had about 10 reports to fix, but I can only imagine in a larger instance how much of a nightmare that would be. It doesn't even fix it if you just change the column name back.

Samuel Mueller

What about keeping the column when you change the column type, such as switch from single select drop down to multi select dropdown.