Anybody Find a Workaround for Accessing Sheet Summary Fields Across Sheets?

Ray Lindstrom

I would like to be able to access Sheet Summary fields from sheet to sheet. You can access them from Reports as well as Dashboard Metric Widgets, but cannot access them by cell linking or references from other sheets.

Has anybody found an work around?

My attempt at a workaround: I tried creating a hidden column that grabs the Sheet Summary field value(s), and then I cell link to the cell(s) in that hidden column. Problem is if someone deletes a line in the sheet, and it's the same line that has a value in the hidden column; that cell link will no longer be pointing to the value because it wouldn't exist. So that workaround does not work. If you could hide rows, that workaround could work. Another problem with this workaround is that if you're sheet is a project plan, the hidden row would roll up to parent and ancestor rows with % complete which would skew the rolled up % complete value.

This missing functionality is very frustrating and often a roadblock for me.

I submitted a Product Idea and would appreciate up-votes from anybody who might agree that this functionality would be useful.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/138523/cell-linking-and-referencing-sheet-summary-fields-from-other-sheet

Darren Mullen

@Ray Lindstrom Using your idea of the hidden column, instead of referencing the sheet summary in just one row of the column, you could make it a column formula. Then in the target sheet, you could use something like Index({range in source sheet}, 1) It would just grab the value from the first row, regardless of if someone deleted a row.

Another option would be to use a sheet summary report, send the data from the sheet summary report using DataMesh or Bridge and then use the that sheet as the source of the cell link.

Ray Lindstrom

@Darren Mullen,

I appreciate your advice. Both ideas could work. Unfortunately, it won't be efficient enough. Too much lift for something that will need to be done very often.

I decided on a much simpler approach. The column I created for capturing 3 different pieces of data could become broken because of row changes. However, the one row that doesn't get deleted is row 1 (at least in this use case because it's a project plan and everybody is already instructed to not delete it). Because of this I will be using 3 columns to capture the 3 pieces of data. The data will be input into the Sheet Summary. Each column's first row cell will grab a value from the Sheet Summary. Then I can cell link to each column's first row cell.

Darren Mullen

@Ray Lindstrom Using your idea of the hidden column, instead of referencing the sheet summary in just one row of the column, you could make it a column formula. Then in the target sheet, you could use something like Index({range in source sheet}, 1) It would just grab the value from the first row, regardless of if someone deleted a row.

Another option would be to use a sheet summary report, send the data from the sheet summary report using DataMesh or Bridge and then use the that sheet as the source of the cell link.

Ray Lindstrom

@Darren Mullen,

I appreciate your advice. Both ideas could work. Unfortunately, it won't be efficient enough. Too much lift for something that will need to be done very often.

I decided on a much simpler approach. The column I created for capturing 3 different pieces of data could become broken because of row changes. However, the one row that doesn't get deleted is row 1 (at least in this use case because it's a project plan and everybody is already instructed to not delete it). Because of this I will be using 3 columns to capture the 3 pieces of data. The data will be input into the Sheet Summary. Each column's first row cell will grab a value from the Sheet Summary. Then I can cell link to each column's first row cell.