Searching Cell History

Gary Hammond

Smartsheet should allow searching cell history within a sheet and across sheets. In our typical task list and project sheets, we have a column titled notes and we keep row updates in the cells. Each update overwrites prior notes and there is no way to search other than the Activity Log. Otherwise, we have to right click and scroll through history. We have no way over conveniently searching for cell history to manage my tasks and projects. Activity Log is not a good option because of the short 90-day duration and not knowing the dates notes were made.

Paul Newcome

Have you looked at using Row Comments?

Gary Hammond

I use row comments pervasively. I overwrite prior row comments with each new update.

Gary Hammond

If you mean Conversations, I sometimes use for detailed notes that are more than a few lines for a notes update.

Paul Newcome

I did mean Conversations. Sorry. Used to be called "Comments", and I am still using the old verbiage.

But row conversations will give you that easier to read/search history of any notes you have to make on each row.

Sherry Fox

Another team makes changes to their releases constantly. I am left with #NO MATCH on my sheets as a result. Then I have to go find these changes. There are so many changes it takes a while. I would like the ability to search the activity log for a specific row # (and the user that made the change. I would then be able to access the part of the log relevant to that change. This is an ongoing battle for me.

Gary Hammond

I am surprised more customers are not interested in being able to search cell history. Like any database, you should be able to search the database. In all of my task lists and projects I have a column titled "notes" and instead of adding notes cumulatively I overwrite notes because I am able to right click and view prior entries via cell history. The issue is that I cannot search cell history. The suggestion of using conversations does work but you have an extra step in entering regular updates.

Harvey E

From the point of view of finding out who changed something, when, and from what would be immensely useful. I've spent too long to think about looking through the activity log trying to find the changes (though there's probably another suggestion around this to add more search criteria or filtering in the activity log which would address this request).