Column Links Now Generally Available!

Hi Community,

Column links, accessible through the “More Tools”->”Link column data” toolbar option in table view, allows users to reference data across sheets, without needing to write formulas.

With column links, you can reference data within columns in other sheets based on a unique identifier, to create flexible cross-sheet lookups. This is instrumental when referencing data sources like a Product Catalog, Employee Directory, or Billing Rates across other sheets to ensure your data is always up-to-date.

This release represents the first phase of column links — future releases will include advanced features to provide enterprise grade flexibility for more complex processes and solutions.

Licensed users on Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans (Legacy & User Subscription Model) are able to use this new feature. You must have admin permissions on the target sheet and viewer permissions or higher on the source sheet.

You can find some help articles to get you started with column links here:

You can also stay informed by subscribing to receive product release updates for curated news of recently released product capabilities and enhancements for the platform of your choosing, delivered to your inbox. As new releases occur, you will receive a weekly email with news of what's released every Tuesday.

Danielle Wilson

Product Marketing Manager

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Comments

Julie Becker

This is awesome, but when will we be able to use all these Table features in our Main Grid View?

Table view is cool and all, but we all know that Grid view is the standard and most used here, so releasing features for a view that most of us prefer NOT to use, isnt going to help Smartsheets business plan or this years Agenda, but releasing those features in Grid view, now thats something most of us can get excited about. 🤸

Cayla Davis

I'd also LOVE to see this in Grid view! That's where the money is at! Love seeing enhancements coming out the door though! Do you have members that you review enhancements with to get their feedback while in design phase? i'd love to be apart of that!

SSFeatures

I believe that Table view will eventually fully replace Grid view. I just dug through the Table View FAQs on this thread

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/137975/table-view-initial-release-is-now-generally-available-for-all-customers

And I found this:

Is table view replacing grid? Grid view will remain available for the foreseeable future. Once table view fully supports key grid features, it will transition to become the new default experience. Once the majority of our customers no longer utilize grid view, we plan to retire it.

Jerome.m

Looks like Table view is only here to steal market shares from "Airtable"

I don't see any "Real" improvement, other than "Fancy looking".

Unusable for me as it is so Slow and laggy with the "autosave" Feature….

SSFeatures

@Jerome.m the Table view is still very new, but it has a lot of potential in the long run.

In my opinion, it's going to take a few years for Table view to surpass Grid view and then ultimately become the full on replacement for Grid view.

But Table view needs more features and it needs to be faster before it can get there. Also, Reports still use Grid view behind the scenes. So they'll need to create a Table View version of Reports before they can replace Grid view.

harryjohn

Thanks for the update! Column links sound like a powerful addition for simplifying cross-sheet data references without complex formulas. Looking forward to exploring this feature and seeing the advanced capabilities in future releases.

Meg Y

Tried Column Links for the first time today on two sheets. We wanted to bring in names of people that responded to a survey in to the sheet with original request. It works great. It is quicker than creating a Data Mesh Workflow.

I was able to created two unique Column Links in one of the sheets. I tried to create the same two in the other sheet and only one worked. The other was showing errors. Not sure if it is because I am using the same source sheet in both of them.

SteCoxy

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/485656#Comment_485656

Not sure if this helps Meg, but originally I was using INDEX/MATCH formulas to pull information across from 1 sheet to another, which was working (albeit I wanted to simplify it so I didn't need a formula in each column - I wanted to use a helper column that would populate all the necessary columns). I then noticed this new functionality and thought I'd try it out.

First sheet was based upon names being populated into a sheet (linked to the Calendar App - used for booking appointments). Sheet 2 had the same columns, but the Name column had all the staff listed already, where I wanted to cross reference who had or hadn't booked an appointment.

Because I had the INDEX/MATCH formula in place already on Grid View, I then experienced a similar issue when I set up the column links in Table View where I was getting a NO MATCH error displayed.

You can get around this by adding =IFERROR( at the beginning of your formula, plus , "") at the end.

Hope that makes sense.

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