Create "SAVE FORMULAS AS TEXT" Option in Backups, Exports, Snapshots, etc.

NeilKY

My tiny brain says that this feature request would be fairly simple to create, and I know it would make many of us very happy.

FEATURE REQUESTED:

Create an option to "Save Formulas as Text" when doing a "Backup", "Export", or "Snapshot". If checked, the system would place a special character in front of all cells in the sheet that contain a formula before creating the excel file or CSV.

Example:

=SUM(Primary1:Primary5) WOULD BECOME '=SUM(Primary1:Primary5)

Benefits of this?

1. It would allow all formulas on a sheet to be saved and restored!
2. For Backups: formulas would be displayed as text instead of values.
3. For Restoring: Users could upload the sheet to Smartsheet & use FIND/REPLACE WITH feature (CTRL+F) to change all '= characters with = to enable the formulas again.
4. Users could download a sheet and modify the formula data offline easily using Find/Replace in excel, which is currently not possible in Smartsheet.
5. Best of all, we would not lose our formulas and can restore previous versions of our formulas if we make a Booboo!

To make it even better, the system would provide TWO files with every backup if "Save Formulas as Text" is selected. One file containing all values in the sheet, and another file containing values for non-formula cells, plus any formulas as text.

Don't forget to VOTE if you want this feature! Thanks :)