How to restore the "Modified" and "Modified By" columns

kbloch

Hello,

We tried to deactivate an automation that ended up modifying all rows. This resulted in the "Modified" and "Modified By" columns being updated to today's date with the same user on all. We have the snapshot from before the change, but cannot overwrite the data in these columns. How do we roll that back?

NicoLHC

@kbloch i guess you have some automation to inform people on changes ?

There is no way to restore, unless if you do some regular back up maybe ….but as you have the screen shots you can find a workaround.

what did you want to achieve , and what is the aim of the workflows?
General Problem Solving:What did cause the problem first place , are you new to the sheets or not familiar with the workflows ?

kbloch

A user accidentally ran a process that made a minor modification to all rows. This resulted in their name overwriting the "Modified" and "Modified By" columns. The process didn't change anything meaningful but resulted in those columns all updating to that user's name and today's date. We are looking to revert it to the previous state as some of those rows were a year or two old but only the "Modified" and "Modified By" columns are meaningful.

I tried converting them to date and text then converting back, but that wipes the data in the columns.

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Hi @kbloch

A short answer to your question is to view the cell history.

If this is too manual, Smartsheet API has the list cell history method.

You need to get the sheet, the column IDs of the "Modified By" and "Modified" columns, and loop rows to get cell history with the row and Column IDs.

https://smartsheet.redoc.ly/tag/cells#operation/cellHistory-get

NicoLHC

@jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp thats cool, thanks for sharing 🎯

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

@NicoLHC

Thanks!😁 Here is my by-product discussion.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/130869/preserving-human-driven-modifications-in-smartsheet