How do I fix cell links from breaking after adding a new template sheet in Control Center?

ConnerLo

We have a blueprint set up that has a summary section with cell links in our template sheets to navigate between the other template sheets/dashboard for our provisioned projects. We also have project metadata sheets that hold data we want to show in the summary sections.

I recently had to create a new template sheet to replace one of the current sheets because the old one didn't fit what we needed it for and the sheet itself was too different to make a couple global updates to and call it a day.

Needless to say when I added the new template sheet into a project, the cell links from the metadata sheet are broken and now show the message in the screenshot. This only happens with the new template sheet even though the links are to the same spots the existing template links go to.

If there is any advice on what to do here that'd be great, thanks! I'd much rather not have to fix each link on top of already having to add the template to our active projects one by one.

Brian_Richardson

Unfortunately I have bad news - as you probably already know, Control Center cannot do updates to references or cell links or hyperlinks. Natively there's nothing you can do besides hand-updates.

You can, however, use Bridge to update these items, if you have it available. Using Bridge you would sweep through all the existing sheets, find the broken reference, and copy in the correct reference from your templates. Similarly, you can have Bridge find your old hyperlinks and cell links and replace them.

Doing all that isn't super straightforward but it's definitely do-able. I can give more specific guidance if you have that available.

Third party integration tools would also be able to work with the API and make these changes.

Brian_Richardson

Unfortunately I have bad news - as you probably already know, Control Center cannot do updates to references or cell links or hyperlinks. Natively there's nothing you can do besides hand-updates.

You can, however, use Bridge to update these items, if you have it available. Using Bridge you would sweep through all the existing sheets, find the broken reference, and copy in the correct reference from your templates. Similarly, you can have Bridge find your old hyperlinks and cell links and replace them.

Doing all that isn't super straightforward but it's definitely do-able. I can give more specific guidance if you have that available.

Third party integration tools would also be able to work with the API and make these changes.

ConnerLo

I ended up creating some Python code using the Smartsheet SDK that found all of the sheets with broken cell links and made new ones to link back to the corresponding project metadata sheet.

Brian_Richardson

Nice!