Excel Import Yielding Strange Formatting Results

Doug Carr

So I have an issue where when I import an Excel workbook with only one sheet and no formulas the cells with text in them come in with a white font color and a black fill.

I tried the advice (disable all extensions) found in another post about a similar issue with a form's font color and it still is coming in that way.

I am using FireFox and it is up to date.

So I tried it in Chrome (made sure it was up to date and turned off all extensions) and got exactly the same results.

Then I got to wondering if it was the way I was exporting it from the source system. The data is currently stored in an Access database and it a query that is exported to Excel. I had been leaving the option "Export data with formatting and layout" checked, so I unchecked that and tried it again.

That was clearly the issue. Even though it does not appear that way (white font, black fill) when you open the exported .xlsx file in Excel, there must be something in that file that causes Smartsheet to swap the font and fill for only the cells that have text in them.

I hope this helps someone out there that may be seeing the same results.

Genevieve P.

Hey @Doug Carr

Thank you for posting your issue + solution - this is really good to know and I'm sure it will help someone else down the line.

Thanks again!

Genevieve