Glitches / Mixed up rows

There have been a handful of occasions now where we load Smartsheet and it looks nothing like it should. Rows get mixed up with no pattern to discern why. Luckily, I had someone take screen shots of what it looked liked before so we could straighten it out. But I need answers. Smartsheet is a great product, and so forth, but this is quite the chore. Why do rows get mixed up? Rows from the bottom are now interspersed towards the top and vice versa. Why?

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Mike Wilday

It sounds like someone is sorting your data. If you don't have the ability to view the activity log (based on account). Contact Smartsheet Support to see if they can help you identify what is going on. https://help.smartsheet.com/contact

Preston

Mike, I appreciate the feedback. There is no method of sorting (that I'm aware of) that would make the rows appear in the order they currently are. This was my first thought. I was ready to rage on someone because I have warned against that very thing. Anyway, I don't believe anyone was actively making changes when this occurred. I noticed it from the app when I refreshed. I then contacted all my team members who had unrefreshed "versions" from a few hours previous. Everything looked normal to them, so I had them take screenshots to see how everything was listed. I am currently manually sorting about 2,000 rows. Fun way to start my weekend.

mcameron

Preston,

Did you find resolution to this issue? We too have this happening more often than I'd care to say. I was curious if another coworker kept a browser window open without refreshing or saving content for an extended period of time (days-weeks) if this could somehow have an adverse effect on our sheet when it is syncing all the other activity on the sheet. I am no expert so this may be entirely off base. Either way I was hoping to find a resolution here in the community.

-Matt

Preston

Matt,

Unfortunately, I have not found a solution to this. The only things that makes any sense is exactly the scenario you've described. We have a small team of about 10 people using this particular sheet daily. It just seems so random. Sometimes there will only be one or two rows moved to the bottom of the list. Sometimes it's "spacer" rows that I am certain no one has edited. It's very odd. Post back here if you get further insight, and I'll do the same.

Thanks,

Preston

Just following up on this. This has become near catastrophic to our organization, and we cannot figure what's going on. Looking for insight everywhere...

Andrée Starå

Hi Preston,

Strange! What does Smartsheet Support say?

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Preston

Hi Andrée,

No word from support yet. I only submitted yesterday.

Support has been backed up as of late apparently. It took a week for them to respond to my last ticket.

Andrée Starå

Ok.

Let me know when you hear back from the Support Team. I'd be interested to know the cause of it.

Preston

Well, I got a mostly boilerplate response. See below. This is standard protocol for our team. Ears perked for any additional advice.

Thanks for contacting Smartsheet Support! It sounds like, when you save your sheet then close and reopen it, the file does not seem consistent with the version you had originally. This was likely caused by by what is referred to as a "Merge Save" can cause data to be reorganized or potentially overwritten. Every time a sheet is saved, a new version of the sheet is saved to the server. For example, when a new sheet is created, the sheet is loaded in version zero, and the first time it's saved, version one is saved to the server. The merge saves you are seeing occur when someone loads and edits one version of the sheet, during which time other people load, edit, and save multiple new versions of the sheet. For example, if two people load version 50, and Person A makes changes and saves the sheet 10 times, then Person A will be working on version 60 while Person B is still editing version 50. When Person B saves their changes, Smartsheet will try to merge their changes with all of the changes that occurred between version 50 and 60, causing a merge-save in version 61.

When multiple users are working on the same sheet, you may see the following:

*User Profile Pictures* - will show up next to the the blue share button to tell you that others are on the sheet. You can click on this icon to see who is on the sheet (https://www.smartsheet.com/release-notes#may-16-2018-smartsheet-release)
*Popups* - will briefly display at the top, center of Smartsheet when you open an in-use sheet, when other collaborators open the sheet you're on, and when other collaborators close the sheet. Pop-ups will also be displayed briefly when other collaborators have saved changes to a sheet.
*A Blue Refresh Icon* - will come up on the multi-user icon when someone has saved a change to a sheet.

To minimize merge save incidents, note the following best practices:

Be aware of the multi-user icons when there are multiple collaborators editing a sheet at once.
Communicate with collaborators and use the Highlight Changes feature to identify what changes are made to the sheet on each new version (https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/521974-highlight-changes-made-to-a-sheet)
Save frequently to prevent version jumps. You can use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S (Cmd + S for Mac)
When prompted by the popup, save and refresh your sheet to minimize version jumps.
When you see a blue refresh icon to indicate a change has been saved, you should Save your changes then click on the blue refresh icon and select the refresh link. Upon refreshing, you should be able to see the changes you just made and any changes others have saved. If you've both made changes to the same cell, the last saved change will be viewable in the cell. The first change made will be viewable by right-clicking on the cell and selecting View History. As a best practice, when working on a sheet at the same time as another user, save frequently, and refresh the sheet when prompted.

I've included links below to some resources that are relevant to what I've mentioned above:

Create Backups in Smartsheet: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/506499-backing-up-your-data
Working with Multiple People on a Sheet: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/522069-working-with-multiple-collaborators
Troubleshooting Guide: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1193198-troubleshooting-guide#data

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