Is it possible to create line entries with multiple embedded lines?

harmons

Heyyas SS Community :)

I'm fairly new-ish to Smartsheets, although I've been using it for some time at a basic level. For this question, I'm focusing on my use of sheets to manage lines of data. I work in higher education as a program manager, and one use of sheets for me and my team is to list out different sections of courses and track certain data on them.

One of the issues that we have in higher education is that you can cross-list sections, meaning that there are 2 sections that are taught at the same time by the same instructor. While each section has a different course record number and certain data need to be entered separately for each section, the statistics for the cross-listed sections are combined. It's a complication that I'm struggling to capture well in Smartsheets in ways that all of my team members can view.

I'm reaching out because: Whereas in Google Sheets or Excel I can merge cells and rows as I wish, I can't seem to see the same type of functionality in Smartsheets. And we need to be using Smartsheets for other data reporting, which is why I use it for this task, too.

Here's an example for the line entry for a Biology course that has 2 sections that are cross-listed:

BIOL 110 H9X/HLX 40788; 45860

If I were doing this in GS or Excel, I would have the ability to have separate lines for H9X (40788) and HLX (45860), but merged in other cells so that I can capture that these are cross-listed sections. Those who need the data on separate lines would have it, while those who need the cells merged would have what they need.

Perhaps it's possible to do this in Smartsheets and I just can't see it?

Thanks in advance for any knowledge or recommendations.

MarceHolzhauzen

Hi @harmons

Smartsheet functions just like a database where each row operates by itself. Unfortunately, you cannot group cells in a platform that uses this as it's base operational principle. There are a few reasons for this - none of which are important for your question 😊

To answer your question, there are a few ways you could approach this. I'll give you two options that would both work. In principle, what you would need is to display the course (BIOL 110) in every row next to the section (HLX40788 and HLX45860) that is beign taught. You'd need this once you start using reports and grouping items. It's just hard to display this the way in which you're thinking now, BUT the good news is you have options.

1. Using a parent child relationship
Add a parnent child relationship to your sheet that would indicate this relationship between the sections and the course. Your sheet would look something like this

When you start using reports that would group items depending on what you want to display, you'll need the "Parent Course" column to group the rows by. I've simply added a formula in this column that displays the relevant parent of the child.

This is the formula I used in there:

=IF((COUNT(CHILDREN([Course / Subject]@row ))) >= 1, [Course / Subject]@row , PARENT([Course / Subject]@row ))

I've also added a column that counts the children and used this column in conditional formatting rules to highligt parent rows grey. Not required but helps.

2. Using colours
Highlight your sections that go together in different colours. Your sheet would look something like this

This is a little more manual, but with some playing around you could automate this and use conditional formatting

I hope this helps