Bug: Please Fix Auto-fill (blank rows)

J. Craig Williams

Please fix the auto-fill bug. If I add a row to sheets via Forms, Zapier, or other automated tool, SOMETIMES there is a gap between the last good row and the new row. SOMETIMES this is single row, sometimes as many as ten rows.



This causes auto-fill formulas to break.

The result of this is hours of time by either me or my customers to determine that something has gone wrong and to fix that something. 



Today was only 10 minutes because I was watching for it. Friday it was an hour and the customer noticed it during a meeting with the CEO. This is bad.



I have NOT noticed a pattern on activity of why this happens, but it happens too often to remain ignored for much longer. I have one customer that it may have happened one time too many and we are discussing other, non-Smartsheet solutions. Not good.

You can consider this an Enhancement Request, I submitted to the PE Request Form. I consider it a known bug, discussed in numerous other threads throughout the Community.

If you can't fix the blank rows, here's another way to work around it.

Column formulas - any new rows gets the default formula. No more drag/copy to get formulas in the entire column. More possible now with the @row feature.

Please fix this.I have no problem telling my customers when Smartsheet won't solve their problem. I do have a problem when the solution I develop breaks because of something that seems so obvious a problem but is not fixed.

Craig

Gwyneth C

Hi Craig,

I confirmed that there is a bug logged for this and that our Development Team is aware. Your case has been added to this issue—Smartsheet support will be reaching out to get additional details from you.

As always, thanks for taking the time to help make Smartsheet a better product.

 

Chris McKay

Hi Gwyneth,

Craig's Enhancement Request idea for Column specific formulas is something I support. I too see the blank rows thing popping up at the most inopportune times and believe that setting it at the column level would fix it.

I am particularly aggrieved when this happens within metadata sheets populated by Smartsheet Control Center. It's a time-consuming bug and unquestionably impacts my client's impressions of Smartsheet and their trust in the data underlying reports.

Gwyneth C

Noted. As per the above, I don't have a specific timeline for this fix, but I did confirm that the dev team is aware and they are working on it. If you'd like to file a specific bug report, please reach out to the Support team.

Thanks for taking the time to comment here.

Regards,

Gwyneth

 

J. Craig Williams

Usually when I spot it, I fix it on the spot. For live sheets, I don't have time wait for support to get involved as the solution is "delete the offending rows and hope it doesn't come back soon." I am pretty sure Save As New will mask whatever the original problem was too.

Craig

Brad Burson

This is an issue at our company as well. Smartsheet has proved to be a relatively flexible solution to our use case. We use API access to handle a lot of our data processing, but the formulas help us tailor data specific to certain sheets without having to do it programmatically - a big time saver. Formulas not being copied to (what should be) adjoining rows often breaks this functionality for us. There's definitely a tipping point where we spend too much time babysitting sheets, it no longer makes sense to utilize Smartsheet, and we simply transition to either an on-prem or cloud database and develop our own reporting solution based off that.

 

Would be greatly appreciated if this issue could be resolved.

Daniel Stein

Thank you Brad, Craig, and Chris for reporting this. If there's any additional detail you can provide on what circumstances cause this, please let us know, as that will help us to diagnose.

If someone enters data at the bottom of a sheet and then deletes it (without deleting the rows), that can result in blank rows at the bottom of the sheet. Do you think this may be the cause?

Thanks,

Daniel

J. Craig Williams

It might be but I don't think it is the only cause.

To me, if the row has no [Created] date, it does not exist and should be ignored.

James H

I submitted a product enhancement request a number of months ago requesting that there was an option type in the column properties for 'formula', allowing the sheet creator to set a default formula for that column. This would ensure the column always had the formula each time a new line was created which would help in the above scenario, but more significantly where users overwrite a formula which then causes the link to be broken. Is it possible to review all the requests that have been submitted (particularly my own) as it seems there is never any feedback on these requests (apologies if I haven't spotted a link)?

Thanks

James

J. Craig Williams

At the risk of derailing my own thread: No, James, there is not a way to see your own enhancement requests (EnhReq's).

I submit a lot of bug reports and EnhReq's to Smartsheet and other products. A couple a week, at least, on average. For some, like Smartsheet and products I am testing, I may semi-track them myself. I use to do this in my electronic journal (http://www.davidrm.com/ - highly recommended and one of a select set of software that has been on my PC's since 2003). I have shifted to a few Smartsheet Sheets and briefly to DR trackers I may be testing (JIra, for example), just to see how they work. (if anyone asks, no, i won't share the Sheets - they aren't written for others to read and some would make a sailor blush)

When posting to Smartsheet, some EnhReq I also post to the Community (sometimes, not all). If you did to, I could at least filter out the ones you wrote, like this

Function 'WORKDAY' returning #INVALID COLUMN VALUE when formula in different column    

https://community.smartsheet.com/node/5747

Update Shared Users of functionality changes within a sheet  

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/update-shared-users-functionality-changes-within-sheet

Task Duration - Partial day at beginning of period, not the end  

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/task-duration-partial-day-beginning-period-not-end

Craig

h1pst3r

This has been a deal-breaker for us. It's not just new rows created by forms, it's a direct insert between two rows that have a simple formula and the auto-fill *never* works. 

This has derailed our productivity in profound ways... as another person above posted, "we can't be babysitting sheets".

I have reports breaking across the organization because you can't get auto-fill to work correctly. But on the other hand we have this terrible new external linking scheme that no one asked for ever.

-C

Tomas Jimenez

Hi Smartsheets team,

I'm still seeing this issue and try as I may Im unable to remove the blank rows via the fx feature or the automated workflow. Can you please help to address this?

BR

TJ

Andrée Starå

Hi @Tomas Jimenez

I hope you're well and safe!

Have you looked into using Column Formulas?

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s)/copies of the sheet(s) or some screenshots? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@workbold.com)

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Lyndsay R.

Hello all,

Curious if you all have seen any improvements. On my intake sheet we have columns where I need certain values to be replicated down the column (not formulas). Our workflow requires user to submit requests on a form, but here lately when the new row is populated those numbers are not replicating down, even if there is not blank rows randomly showing, which seemed to be the culprit at one time. Any ideas how I can remedy this? Currently having to pull the values down manually.