Best Practice for connecting sheets

Beth Fantozzi 1

Hi everyone. Can you help me with some ideas on how to best connect sheets when using a basic Smartsheet plan? I have a Master Sheet that houses all properties. But then on various sheets, I'd like to list details. For example, the master sheet would feed information into a sheet that tracks lease information. Another sheet would track tax information and another sheet would track loans.

My initial thought is that when a new line is added to the master sheet, the data can copy over to these various sheets where we can start collecting data.

Does anyone else have other ideas? Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Paul Newcome

"My initial thought is that when a new line is added to the master sheet, the data can copy over to these various sheets where we can start collecting data."

You can set up a copy row automation from the master sheet to the individual sheets.

Cory Page

I have a few workspaces that required similar structure layout.

Pending on the masters size I wouldn't place everything in one sheet, it makes it hard to keep organized and usually fills up faster than you would think. Adding in automation to control your base/raw data adds a level of complexity that doesn't really sound like you need. Use Web Forms if the submissions are low, or directly work in the sheets if the data entry is high.

I would recommend creating a workspace, in that workspace you create sheets specific to the different data types you need. Try your absolute best to keep the columns as standard as possible, Example: Your primary column should be the same data in all the sheets, in most cases this would be account numbers, check numbers ext. The more consistent you keep your column names the easier life will be when building the reports.

Once your sheets are created use reports to access the data, this way you have access to all of your data in one Report or separate focused reports. Trust me there is nothing worse than receiving an email saying automation failed due to max row count. Using a workspace for your raw data and focused sheets will allow for expansion and since the report is linked to a workspace any new sheets created will automatically update in the reports.

Then if you still want a master you can copy from the individual raw data sheets over to a master, but typically you will probably rather start building summary sheets.

You mention you have the master already though so you can still use reports to break things down if you would like. Just make sure you have good filters in the master and anything is possible.

Hopefully this makes sense and you like the idea, I have about 5 data sets built very similar to the above outline but they are huge with alerts and audits added in. Very fun to work on for sure.

Paul Newcome

"My initial thought is that when a new line is added to the master sheet, the data can copy over to these various sheets where we can start collecting data."

You can set up a copy row automation from the master sheet to the individual sheets.