Deleting something in a Report also deletes it in the Sheet?

Lisa Casello

I have created a number of reports from a set of surveys, and just realized when I deleted an unnecessary row from a Report that it deleted the same information from the related Sheet. Everything I have read says that Reports are just representations of the Sheets, so why are deletions of cells and rows in my Reports also deleting that source info in the Sheet? Help! Thanks. 😊

Kerry St. Thomas

Picture you're sitting in your living room, looking out the window - there's a bird sitting on a tree or wherever it is a bird might sit - until you shine a flashlight through the window and Mister Bird gets annoyed and flies away.

In this very picturesque, idyllic image… your living room window is analogous to a Smartsheet report. It allows you to see through the wall, and see what's on the other side. You can see just what the window shows (your south-facing window doesn't show you what's due north of you), and it even enables you to interact with the bird - analogous to data on a sheet.

When you broke out the flashlight, you were interacting with the ACTUAL bird, and not some reflection of it. In the same way, Smartsheet reports pull data together that allow you to see specific columns of data on one or more sheets; it's just a window that doesn't ITSELF contain data. So when you deleted data on your report… you were ACTUALLY interacting with and deleting the data on the underlying sheet.

TVang

@Lisa Casello, if you don't want folks to scare the bird away, tell them to put their hands in their pockets. I.e., give them view-only access to the report. 🙂

If a user has edit privileges to the sheet AND you give them edit privileges to the report, they will also have the permissions to edit the row data in the report.

Edit users DO NOT have the ability to delete the row from within the report. They can "blank" the cells but not delete the row.

Kerry St. Thomas

Picture you're sitting in your living room, looking out the window - there's a bird sitting on a tree or wherever it is a bird might sit - until you shine a flashlight through the window and Mister Bird gets annoyed and flies away.

In this very picturesque, idyllic image… your living room window is analogous to a Smartsheet report. It allows you to see through the wall, and see what's on the other side. You can see just what the window shows (your south-facing window doesn't show you what's due north of you), and it even enables you to interact with the bird - analogous to data on a sheet.

When you broke out the flashlight, you were interacting with the ACTUAL bird, and not some reflection of it. In the same way, Smartsheet reports pull data together that allow you to see specific columns of data on one or more sheets; it's just a window that doesn't ITSELF contain data. So when you deleted data on your report… you were ACTUALLY interacting with and deleting the data on the underlying sheet.

Lisa Casello

I would like ALL answers done in story form from now on, thank you very much… this is great, thank you so much Kerry!!! ☺️

TVang

@Lisa Casello, if you don't want folks to scare the bird away, tell them to put their hands in their pockets. I.e., give them view-only access to the report. 🙂

If a user has edit privileges to the sheet AND you give them edit privileges to the report, they will also have the permissions to edit the row data in the report.

Edit users DO NOT have the ability to delete the row from within the report. They can "blank" the cells but not delete the row.

Lisa Casello

@Toufong Vang I love birds and definitely do NOT want to scare them away, thanks so much for the advice! 🦅