Uncheck a Box if a cell is blank

KDev

Hi! New to smartsheet so bear with me. We have a smartsheet with a lot of users and we want to have certain columns revert to unchecked at the row (they are check box columns) if our "Supplier" column is blank. One thing though is our supplier column reverts to yellow background fill when its blank, so I hope that wont cause issues in the formula. Is it the "IFBLANK" formula I need to use even if it has a background? Not sure if Smartsheet recognizes it as blank then. Thanks for your help!

Darren Mullen

@KDev the function is ISBLANK() and the formatting should not affect that.

KDev

Thank you. Do you know how I should write it? I am not very good at formulas and the ones I've found that are close are not doing what I need.

Kaveri Vipat

Hi KDev,

Please try the following formula in the Checkbox column.

=IF(ISBLANK(Supplier@row), 0, 1)

I hope this helps!

KDev

Thank you Kaveri. This works for the blank but then it auto checks it for anything filled in the supplier column. We want our team to dictate when that box gets checked as it reflects the tactic is ready to invoice, so they're the only ones who can tell that. But when there is no supplier assigned to that row tactic, I want it to remain automatically unchecked.

Paul Newcome

It should default as unchecked unless someone is checking the box and then removing the supplier.

I would suggest an Automation instead of a formula.

You could se the trigger to when rows are added or changed and a condition of supplier being blank and then use a Clear Cell action on the checkbox.

KDev

Thanks Paul. I did try that but it says I would need to trigger the automation myself as it wont let me schedule it to do it hourly, daily or anything. I guess I can do that and just try and set a reminder to run it once a week or something.

Paul Newcome

Are you able to provide screenshots of that?

KDev

Here you go

Smartsheet error.png

smartsheet error 2.png

@Paul Newcome

Paul Newcome

Right. So it isn't saying that you have to run it yourself. Just change the trigger to be right away (Run Workflow: Immediately).

KDev

Will that mean it will keep doing it continuously though or just once? Our team uses this report everyday and things are constantly changing, I thought in order for it to keep running the workflow automatically it had to say "hourly or daily or weekly" so it would search for changes in the file?

Paul Newcome

It will run every time Supplier changes to blank.