Importing excel with a column containing Hyperlinks into Smartsheet

Question

I have an excel that contains values that are hyperlinks constructed with Hyperlink construct.

for eg: =HYPERLINK("https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/readiness/common/26b/common26b/26B-common-wn-f43843.htm","Multifactor Authentication (MFA)")

When I import that into smartsheet, all the values read #UNPARSEABLE. I see the hyperlink when I hover on it. How can I resolve it to be a proper hyperlink with a display text in import?

S.Stone · Answer

@Kala one workaround is to add a ' before the = to get it visible in Smartsheet. That allows the links to populate as clickable URLs, regardless of extra text.

You can then edit the text as desired, removing unnecessary text and/or right-clicking and selecting Hyperlink… (or Ctrl+K) to modify the display text.

Andy Kolden · Answer

I'm unable to identify a satisfactory workaround. The best I can come up with is to remove the hyperlink formula from the source excel and instead just enter the URL as is. It will then import into Smartsheet as a clickable link. You'd have to manually change the display text for each individual URL in Smartsheet after importing though, which probably isn't feasible if there are a lot of URLs.

Example:

1. In excel, the URL is entered as =HYPERLINK("https://www.smartsheet.com","Smartsheet").

2. You'd need to change it to just https://www.smartsheet.com.

3. Import into Smartsheet.

It will display in Smartsheet as https://www.smartsheet.com and be clickable.

It's probably not desirable to change the entry method in excel. Unfortunately, no matter what I try, I can't use a formula in Smartsheet to extract the URL from the HYPERLINK formula (it always returns a "#BLOCKED" result) so it seems like editing the excel is the only option. I'm certainly not an expert, though, so maybe someone else can come up with something.

Kala · Answer

Thank you @Andy Kolden for your response.

Is there any workaround?