Need both Text and Contact List versions of people on same sheet

Andrea Zenner

I have a PowerBI report that pulls data from a Sheet. When I use a contact list on the sheet, the email address shows on the report, not the name. The customer wants to see names, not email addresses. I need the contact list column because I have reports that filter on logged in user. I don't want people to have to enter their name twice, once in the contact list for filtering and once for the text field needed for the BPI report. Is there a way to get both while only having people enter their name once on the intake form?

There could be a lot of names on this sheet. If I HAVE to I can create a lookup sheet to look up the name from the Contact List column, but would prefer to not have to maintain that.

Thanks!

Naeem Ejaz

You’ve hit a common limitation with Smartsheet + Power BI integration: Contact List columns return email addresses, not display names, because Smartsheet stores the email as the unique identifier for contacts

• Power BI pulls raw data from Smartsheet.

• Contact List columns are stored as email internally, so that’s what Power BI sees.

• Display names are UI-level formatting in Smartsheet, not part of the raw data.