How to show Contact Names instead of email addresses in Contact Column in Sheet?

Hello all.

I am using Contact Columns in my Sheet, where we add Contacts. There are two ways to add a row: either by submitting a form, either by inserting a row inside the Sheet. The problem is that often only the person's email is visible while we want to show the person's name.

From my research I found that you have to add this person as a contact in order for their name to appear in the Contact Column. However, I have already tried this and one email still doesn't have a name attached. I have added the name multiple times by double clicking the email field and editing the contact but that doesn't seem to do anything.

Is there some other thing I haven't found and is the key to make this work?

Thank you.

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Accepted answers

DJB

@Bill in Ohio, Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I think that is correct, or pretty close. I feel in my example kwall does have an account (free version) but hasn't set up his profile. Although it's been hard to confirm exactly. Today it is working as expected, so i suspect he has since set up his profile.

All comments

Hamza1

Hi @moraki

To show the name of the user you’ll want to add the user as a contact by following the steps below:

In the Navigation Bar, select Account > My Smartsheet Contacts.
To display the Contact form, in the My Smartsheet Contacts form, select Add.
Type the name and email address of the contact, and select OK.

After these steps, Smartsheet adds your new contact(s) to your contact list. Following this you can then start to type the name of the user in the cell of the Contact List column which should display the name of the user. Please see the following screenshots for reference:

For more information on managing contacts please see the help article https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/796143-managing-contacts

In the event that you’r still experiencing an issue, please kindly provide screenshots of the behaviour you’re seeing and cover any sensitive information.

Thanks,

Hamza

moraki

Dear Hamza,

Thank you for your reply and the information you provided.

As I see in your screenshot (the second one), when you start typing the email address, the name of the contact is not showing on the dropdown option below, only the email address. This is the problem I am trying to solve.

I am attaching the same screenshots from my account but you can see that it is the same scenario as the one you described. I have added a user as a contact and yet, when I type their email, their name doesn't load/appear on the field. However for another user it works and shows their name. So I cannot understand the logic behind this.

Do you have any other ideas on how I could solve this issue?

Hamza1

Hi @moraki

Pleas kindly note that if a contact has already been selected in the column with the email, and then you add the contact with the Contact Name, the email will still be an option because it appears in the column already. In the screenshot provided, once I start typing the name of the user, the email address also appears but when I click on it this will display the name of the user on that particular cell. Please see the screenshots below:

When you type a name or email address in a Contact List column, the names that are displayed will include the following:

Any preferred contact values that you’ve set up in the Column Properties window.
All collaborators shared to the sheet.
Any other contacts or email addresses that have been assigned to other rows in the sheet.
People in your personal Smartsheet contacts list. (More information on this is available here.)
If you're a part of a Business or Enterprise account, other people that are in the account. (More information on User Management is available here.)

For more information on the above please see this help center article.

KMarti

I have a similar question. I'm setting up a sheet where I want end users to enter their email address in the form, but once the form is submitted and the row is added to the sheet, I want it to appear on the sheet as the contact name instead of the email address. I have the users added to my contacts list. How can I accomplish this?

Genevieve P.

Hey @KMarti

What I would personally do here is have a "reference sheet" that has two columns: a Contact list column with all the users listed as Contacts, and a Text/Number column with their associated email address.

Then you can adjust the Form's security settings so that the user has to log into Smartsheet to fill out the form, which then allows the form to automatically capture the email address (so they don't have to manually add it in) in the Created By system column in your sheet.

Once you have the email, you can use an Index(Match formula to look into your reference sheet and bring back the associated Contact.

If you only have a small number of users in the form, you could use an Assign People workflow instead, with the condition block checking the email address before assigning the contact.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Jason Chafin

Here is how I display contact NAMES instead of EMAIL addresses from scratch. If you already have the contacts added, you can skip down to "How to change the cell to show the contact name instead of their email address" in BOLD

First, you need to click on "Account" in the bottom left corner.

Then click on "My Smartsheet Contacts"

This will open another window where you will click on the "Add" button and then enter the first and last name of the contact and their email address. Then click "OK"

Now, go back to the sheet you are working on.

Name a column in your sheet "Contact Name"

Now, hover your mouse on the "Contact Name" column header and choose the 3 dots at the right of the "Contact Name". Then, choose "Edit Column Properties..."

Now, choose "Contact List" and click "OK".

Now, under your "Contact Name" column header, type the name of the person you would like to add for that row. The user that you added previously will show up as one of the options. Click on the correct name that pops up.

How to change the cell to show the contact name instead of their email address

Once you have clicked on their name and if an email shows up in the cell instead of their name, as shown below, you will need to do the following.

Hover your mouse over the "Contact Name" column header and choose the 3 dots at the right of the "Contact Name". Then, choose "Edit Column Properties...". Then select "Text/Number" and click "OK"

The cell will now look like this.

Now modify the cell contents to look like the following:

Now, hover over the "Contact Name" column header and click on the 3 dots and switch it back to "Contact List" and click "OK"

The contact's name instead of the contact's email will be showing and your problem is solved.

Hopefully this helps someone. You can share the sheet with this person with various permission levels and set up automation to email them based on certain criteria for updates, etc. That's a whole other topic.

DJB

I feel the respondents aren't understanding the question. The steps shown are basic and already known. The issue is that the contact is already set up with a name and email address in "My Smartsheet Contacts", but when adding the contact as an option to the contact column, for some contacts only the email shows up. I have tried numerous approaches as Moraki describes, but to no avail. Some contacts stubbornly remain email addresses only. This on a new sheet, so no history in the columns to consider.

DJB

@moraki, were you ever able to resolve your issue? In my case, what i found is that although i had set up the contact correctly, the contact's profile would override my setup. So if they hadn't set up their profile i would only get their email address. In our case, all the contacts are a part of a business plan - licensed and unlicensed.

Bill in Ohio

@DJB, I may not be understanding what you are looking for, but have you tried using a helper column?

I have my contact in a column "Name", and then a text column, "TextName", that has the formula =Name@row in it. This gives me just the full name and is much easier to use in dashboards and reports.

DJB

@Bill in Ohio Maybe this screen shot will help. I feel the original question, and my question, was why do people in a contact list sometimes show up as a name and sometimes as the email address, even though the contact is set up correctly in 'My Smartsheet Contacts'. In my example, 'Sales Rep' is a 'Contact list'. kwall@ is a contact set up with a name the same as Dennis, but the field pulls in the email. It does something similar in the 'Share' screens. I suspect it is because kwall hasn't set up their profile in our organization.

Bill in Ohio

@DJB , in my experience, for those that have created an account in our system, they will show up as Dennis B in your example. For those contacts that I have added, that don't have an account, they will show up as kwall@ba... does. This is why I created the helper column. I know in other PM software you are able to select how the contacts, [Sales Rep] column, is displayed, but I have not found a way to do that in a "Contact list" column.

DJB

Abe B.

Hello,

I've tried this method many times and unfortunately did not work. I still see many of our team members in our org as an email address rather than a first and last name. Tried many other workarounds but the results was the same. Still having a full list/sheet with emails, which doesn't look right. Keep in mind, many if not all these contacts have already registered their First & Last name when created their accounts, and they show appropriate names in other sheets.

LydiaM

I am having the same issue as @DJB and @Abe B. I have correctly entered My Contacts with first and last name, but for some contacts, only the email address is displayed. If the user's profile is indeed overwriting the way the name is entered into My Contacts, this is an absolutely terrible user experience that Smartsheet needs to remedy. It is impractical to expect that everyone who needs to click on a review link in a dashboard will correctly set up a free account. The sheet owner's contacts should determine how the contact name is displayed in a sheet.

DJB

@LydiaM is there any way you can test with a couple of your contacts? Mine are all working now - i pestered the users to set up their profiles, but i didn't do enough testing to understand the nuances entirely.

I'm not sure overwriting user info from the user's profile is a terrible experience necessarily. I see the same defaults on other platforms (such as e-transfer at my bank) and i've often appreciated it. What might be better is if each free account was required to set up their contact information completely at the onset.

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