Rich Text Widget Scroll Bar Change

Deena Duran

Hello, all!

There seems to be a change in how a dashboard Rich Text widget is formatting. I first noticed this on April 22, 2025.

Any rich text widget on all dashboards is adding extra space at the end of the text. When editing the widget, it appears that there is no extra added space--it looks normal. When you save it and view the dashboard, the rich text is now needing a scroll bar to scroll through the extra blank space.

The Rich Text widget was previously formatted without all the added space at the end, so all of my dashboards are formatted accordingly to avoid unnecessary scroll bars.

My guess is that this change may have been a mistake, but I would like to request that it go back to normal sizing.

I submitted a support ticket and they confirmed that this seems to not necessarily be a system issue, but rather how the feature is designed to function at this time.

Kyle Chipman

thanks for posting Deena. This is a bug for sure - was able to test and confirm on my side yesterday. Appreciate you posting for the community and the health of the product!

BethanyB

We are now seeing this as well. Should we put in a support ticket?

Andrew Bunn

Also happening for us, any updates and it makes the dashboards look pretty terrible.

Deena Duran

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/481844#Comment_481844

Hello, I put in a support ticket for this, and they suggested that I post here for product feedback. I think they found that it is not an error, exactly, but rather than it is functioning the way it was (most recently) designed, so it should really go back to the designer. You can always put in a support ticket, as this may help them prioritize it, but I think that those upvotes help as well! Thank you!

Deena Duran

@Andrew Bunn

I agree; my dashboards look much worse when users are trying to scroll through the dashboard as a whole and keep getting stuck in rich text widget scrolling.

diedr098

I am also seeing this scrolling issue on our dashboards; However, Only those widgets that I have edited recently…

Should anyone experiencing this place a ticket in hopes that Smartsheet would see that this is problematic / something to be fixed?

Melissa PB

We're also seeing the issue. We'll put in a ticket.

Melissa PB

We got a response that said,

"Upon testing on my own Dashboard, I was able to replicate the same concern, and it appears that this is the current expected behavior of the Widget in the dashboard.  This does not indicate a system issue but rather reflects how the feature is designed to function at this time. We encourage you to submit your suggestions/feedback  through our product feedback channels, as user input is invaluable in helping us improve."

Not sure what to do with that since it makes the dashboad hard to navigate. Has anyone else received a response? We'll keep providing feedback.

B.Wats

We’re experiencing this issue as well, and it’s creating significant problems for our users across dashboards and portals. It’s far too easy for someone to accidentally scroll text out of view while navigating a dashboard, leading to key information being missed.

This clearly appears to be a bug rather than an intentional feature. The behaviour has appeared suddenly, serves no clear purpose, and there’s been no communication about changes to rich text widgets.

We’ve had similar experiences in the past where initial responses stated that issues were “working as designed,” but after further escalation, the bugs were eventually acknowledged and corrected. We strongly encourage a closer look at this, as the current behaviour is disruptive to user experience and dashboard usability.

Also, we would urge Smartsheet to improve internal processes for how your technical support team identifies and handles potential bugs. Simply stating that everything is “working as designed” when it clearly isn’t leads to a huge amount of wasted time, with unnecessary back-and-forth with support, and delays in resolving issues that are impacting your users.

AvN

We are also experiencing this issue. It's easy to accidentally scroll a widget into oblivion without noticing, which is creating problems for our teams working on busy sites who need to access information speedily. It can lead to important information being missed at critical times, and we'd appreciate if this was fixed very soon.

Ekul

The extra lines at the bottom that create a scroll bar are having a significant negative impact on our dashboards. The user experience and navigation are terrible and renders certain dashboard unusable.

Jake Gustafson

Also seeing this. Very unaesthetically pleasing.

cpmurphy

Looks like it's fixed!

Kyle Chipman

Wonderful that a fix was put in place for what was clearly a bug.

If any folks from the Smartsheet side of things are reading this thread, what is nature of the disconnect between Support stating that this was design intent when it's actually a bug that requires fixing? It seems as though the response of "this is the current expected behavior of the Widget in the dashboard" puts the responsibility back on the user to submit through these forums, which offer limited visibility on traction and progress, as opposed to offering solutions and coordination internally across teams.

To ask this more directly, is there internal communication from what Support is seeing in their cases and what Product / Engineering can resolve as bug fixes?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Kyle Chipman

Happy to clarify: in this specific scenario there was a misunderstanding with two of the support agents that received the initial tickets of the widget behaviour. Those tickets were still reported and tracked in the back-end, gathered for Engineering to double check / review when they had time.

This meant that the priority of that review increased with the combination of more tickets to Support and this specific Idea receiving additional votes (thank you to all who commented/voted!).

I double-checked with Support and can confirm that subsequent tickets were told that it was actively being investigated, not expected, so the response you see copy/pasted here does not represent the majority of Support responses.

Personally, I'm glad to see those agents direct members here because it helps to have public votes! We had more votes on this post than tickets raised, so seeing this response is incredibly helpful, for Support, Product, and Engineering. Product actively reviews this section of the forum and they respond to top-voted posts once a month. This means that as the votes increased, there would have been a response to confirm if it was expected or not down the line, even if the original support tickets were not reviewed.

You've all done the right thing! Opening tickets, commenting here, making sure your voice is heard.

Thank you,
Genevieve