Web form submitted child rows - how to sort them into place?

Loann McGee

Good afternoon,

I have a sheet where we are tracking time allocated to various projects. Each web-form submitted project is then given a parent/child relationship with the child row being the submitted info and the parent being the summary view of all the children by the same project name. 

However, when I try to sort new submissions I cannot seem to figure out how to get them to sort to be under the parent row. They are sorting on top of the parent, as in the picture below.

Help?

Blessings,
Loann

 

Tim Meeks

Loann,

 

If i understand your question correctly, these new submissions have not yet been assigned to a parent row?

 

The only thing I could think of is to create a new column that is an auto# format and have it autopopulate with a row ID for each submission. Then you could sort by the row ID in Ascending order?

 

 However, if you move the submission row under a parent, it would still keep this #.

 

hope that helps or gives you some ideas.

 

Tim

Loann McGee

I'm creating the parent rows, as needed. But there are several where there is already a parent row created but new submissions via the webform populate into the top row ( as designated on the webform preferences).

I just thought that once they're on the sheet that I could do a sort and they would sort below the parent row, but they sort on top of the parent row. So it's quite a bit of cut/paste to put them in the right order.

Blessings,

Loann

Tim Meeks

Gotcha.. Yes, The new row is an "adult" without children, so it will not automatically become a "child."  You have to paste it or indent it under the parent for it to become a child and thus sort correctly. 

 

It may be the sheet default that the Created Date sorts to the top.  You might could sort by cretaed Date (add the column) and thus they would sort below the Parent Row and it's children. However, the row would still be an "adult" so you would still have to make it a child manually with the Indent feature.

 

Tim

Loann McGee

Right - I understand I have to indent it, but was hoping that the sort would put them after the existing parent when I did a sort. I tried Title (ascending) and then Date of Work (ascending) to no avail, even though all new entries would be a date after the existing ones.

Onward I go... 

 

 

Travis

Loann, add a period before the B of your parent row and it will be sorted above the "adult" rows. Like this:

 

Loann McGee

Travis - it will sort them above or below? I'm trying to get them to sort below, knowing I'll need to do the indent to make them the children.

Travis

It will sort the parent row to the top and the unassociated rows below the hierarchy. Sorry, my screenshot might have confused you... that is pre-sort 

MGF

Hi Travis,

I have a similar issue. 

I would like the new rows generated by a form to go to the bottom of the children rows under a specific parent row, without having to revert to sorting, ....

Has this functionality been added to smartsheet considering that people have been asking these questions since 2015?