"Email" appears in approval request only as a name, not an address?

dmartin

I am trying to give supervisors quick access to contact anyone seeking an approval for an excused absence and when I choose to share certain fields from my sheet in the message with them, I wanted to include the name and email, but when I do this, the email only shows up as a copy of their name, not an actual address.

I am pulling their emails from a contact list in the sheet.

Any suggestions?

SoS | Dan Palenchar

For this explanation I will assume the column with the contacts in it is called "Contact".

Create a separate column, I'm going to call it "Contact Name".

Add this formula in "Contact Name":

=Contact@row

Convert "Contact Name" to a column formula as shown here and below:

Done!

Dan Palenchar | School of Sheets Solutions Consulting (Smartsheet Aligned Gold Partner)

Smartsheet Consulting Inquiries: schoolofsheets.com/workwithus

Smartsheet Tutorial Videos: schoolofsheets.com/youtube

dmartin

I'm not sure I understand what this will do. Here's what I'm talking about:

Screenshot 2023-09-21 114614.png

It says "email" and should write out the actual address. But, in the sheet itself, the column in question is a "Contact List Column" which uses the individual's email.

Why would creating a new column for just the name make any difference?

Genevieve P.

Hi @dmartin

There currently isn't a way to use a formula to only get the email address of a Contact listed in a Contact column. If you reference a Contact that has a display name, the name will be what appears in another cell.

What I would suggest doing here is have a separate sheet stored somewhere with everyone's Contact down a Contact Column and then their email typed out into a Text/Number column. Then you can use this sheet as a reference sheet, getting the email using an INDEX(MATCH combination (see here). That way the text of the email can be displayed in your update request.

Cheers,

Genevieve