Auto numbering when not wanted

brhea110891

There seems to be something odd happening in some of my sheets and I don't understand why it is happening. Can you explain? See screenshot. It is not because I am using the copy down functionality. Also, If I do have a project name that ends in a number and I need to identify this for all rows. What is the best practice? Use Roman numerals?

Gwendolene Day

Hi there - I've found that a alpha-numeric text doesn't "see" the number values, just as plain text. So it sorts them like it does with alphabetical order (such as ta, te, the) rather than a numeric sequence. To get around this, I always use leading zeros for single-digit numbers. 01, 02, 03…, or 001, 002, 003… etc. It sees the first number in a 2-or-more digit as the same as single digit number.

brhea110891

Thank you for this explanation.

brhea110891

Hi Gwendolene - I went back to the issue and your explanation still does not help me understand why Smartsheet may have auto changed the number at the end of a project name. It did not just reorder them.