#BLOCKED / Auto-Save Issue in Project Billing Forecast Report

We are still facing a critical #BLOCKED / Invalid Value issue in our Project Billing Forecast Report.

📌 Current behavior:

In the underlying Sheets, formulas (e.g., Total Billed This Period, To Date Billed) initially show #BLOCKED/Invalid Value, then refresh to correct numbers.
However, the Sheet does not auto-save this correction.
As a result, the Report keeps showing #BLOCKED unless we manually press Save.

📌 Context:

The issue appeared after updating formulas (Previous Application, Complete This Period, Total line) and running a Global Update (Find & Replace) through Control Center.
We also saw a similar case earlier with API integration (daily writes into Sheets), where it looked like the values were written but not saved.

📌 Observation:
We suspect this may be an internal Smartsheet bug rather than just API or Control Center behavior.
It feels like each Sheet has two states:

a saved state,
and an editable state.

Formulas seem to pull results from the saved state, but writes are happening in the editable state, causing a mismatch. This could explain why the Report is pulling #BLOCKED values until a manual Save reconciles both states.

📌 Why it matters:
This has become critical for us. This problem is now blocking billing forecasts for clients.

➡️ Has anyone found a way to force auto-save after formula refresh or API updates?
➡️ Smartsheet team – can this be escalated urgently?

Thanks for help,

Hanna

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Accepted answers

Paul Newcome

I have seen this happen on rare occasion, and I have always had to reach out to Support to get it resolved as it is some bug on the back end.

All comments

Paul Newcome

I have seen this happen on rare occasion, and I have always had to reach out to Support to get it resolved as it is some bug on the back end.

hanna_arete_anubis

Thank you so much for confirming this!
I really appreciate your insight — it helps us understand that the issue is on the backend and we need to continue working with Support.

Kate Orendochka

Hi @Paul Newcome ,

Did reaching out to Support help? Were they able to provide any solution for auto-saving sheets? We’re still facing the same issue — we manually saved a bunch of sheets, but the problem keeps coming back.

Paul Newcome

@Kate Orendochka Yes. Support was able to help in these instances.

Kate Orendochka

Could you please share how they fixed it for you? Did they save the sheets automatically for you?

Paul Newcome

@Kate Orendochka I am not sure what they did exactly. While on the phone with someone, they mentioned the phrase "dirty save" and did something on their end after which I logged out, cleared my cookies and cache, logged back in, and didn't have anymore issues with it.

Paul Newcome

@hanna_arete_anubis Support did not do the "dirty save". They mentioned that's what the problem was. Basically there was some bad data stored on the back-end that wasn't clearing out. I was on the phone with someone and didn't write down their name, but it does sound like this may be a slightly different issue as mine was not Control Center related.

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