How and/or when does a CellLink Object 'status' get updated to 'BROKEN'?

Across our project portfolio, each project has a main project sheet. This sheet has rows added & deleted as tasks are added or canceled from a project.

Individual departments have department specific tracking sheets which mirrors the task list in the in main project sheet and certain key values are linked to the main project sheet via cell links.

My question arises when a task/row is deleted from the main project sheet. I understand that the cell link will persist, but based on the API documentation, I expect the status to change to 'BROKEN'. However, when I check the status of cell links for which I know the source row to have been deleted, the status remains 'OK' even if the source row was deleted months ago.

CellLink Object

columnId	number Column Id of the linked cell.
rowId	number Row Id of the linked cell.
sheetId	number Sheet Id of the sheet that the linked cell belongs to.
sheetName	string Sheet name of the linked cell.
status	string `BLOCKED` One of several other values indicating unusual error conditions. `BROKEN` The row or sheet linked to was deleted. `CIRCULAR` One of several other values indicating unusual error conditions. `DISABLED` One of several other values indicating unusual error conditions. `INACCESSIBLE` The sheet linked to cannot be viewed by this user. `INVALID` One of several other values indicating unusual error conditions. `NOT_SHARED` One of several other values indicating unusual error conditions. `OK` The link is in a good state.

Is my understanding of the CellLink status attribute incorrect? How often is the CellLink status updated?

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Cell linking

Accepted answers

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Hi @Clay.Hall

As I tested, when I deleted rows 2 and 3 with cell-link-out to other sheets, the cell-link-in value on the other sheet (tracking sheet: department A) was updated to "None" immediately.

When I removed the cell-link-out to other sheets, not the rows themselves, the cell-link-in values were updated to "None" as well.

All comments

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Hi @Clay.Hall

As I tested, when I deleted rows 2 and 3 with cell-link-out to other sheets, the cell-link-in value on the other sheet (tracking sheet: department A) was updated to "None" immediately.

When I removed the cell-link-out to other sheets, not the rows themselves, the cell-link-in values were updated to "None" as well.

Clay.Hall

@jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp Thank you for confirming the cell link behavior. I was able to recreate your results with dummy sheets. Previously I had followed this same procedure, but I had added dummy rows to the production sheets.

This led me to check if our production, destination sheet is within limits:

Total Rows: 4880
Total Columns: 80
Total Cells: 390400
Incoming Cell Links (Active): 23829

While my destination sheet appears to fall within the sheet limits, I am now questioning the 500 link limit for a source sheet:

"You can create links of up to 500 cells from the same source sheet at a time and can have a total of 500,000 inbound links in a destination sheet."

Can anyone provide clarity to this limit? Does it mean that for a given destination sheet, a single source sheet can only have 500 outbound cell links? Or does it mean a source sheet can only have a total of 500 outbound cell links at a given time.

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

@Clay.Hall

Yes, you can create 500 cell links at a time. To create more than 500 cell links, you need to repeat the 500 cell link creations.

The demo sheet below has 2000 cell-link-outs created in the 500-cell batch.

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=9bc61be798ef42ad87c10d87b51c930a

I got this error message when I tried to create 1000 cell links at a time.

The destination sheet has 2000 cell-links-ins.

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=ff49fd58f49a42918ed1b949a45e8add

Clay.Hall

@jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Thanks again for being so quick to respond. It's been really helpful to keep me from heading down the wrong path.

After you clarified the 500 cell link creation limit, I started to explore the inbound and outbound cell links and reference limit:

Sheet Component	Maximum
Rows	20,000
Columns	400
Cells	500,000
Characters in a cell	4,000
Inbound and outbound cell links or references	500,000

Attempting to count all of the cell links & references, it didn't seem like I would be at issue with the 500,000 reference maximum:

I was able to reduce the number of "Used in formula on: " references to below 100,000. I re-tested the processes of deleting a task in the source sheet and the cell links in the destination sheet disappeared as expected.

Is it possible to access the "Used in formula on : " elements or Sheet Reference Manager via the API so that these limits can be monitored?

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