Unhide particular columns rather than 'unhide all columns'

Blaine Campbell

It would be useful to be able to unhide only certain columns, rather than 'all', when you have spent some time creating a partiuclar view (say for instance you are projecting in a meeting, so have a smaller screen size), but realise you need to show just 1 column, instead have to rehide all again.

Kit Unger

I’m researching how Smartsheet users would use saved views, e.g., sorting, filtering, ability to choose columns, grouping, etc. How likely would you be to use this feature vs. hiding/unhiding columns? (Please feel free to provide any other information about your specific use case in this discussion or in this web form.)

Greg Hawk

You can unhide single columns by clicking and dragging the column header of the hidden column. 

 

Here's an example:

 

Before hiding the Assigned To column

Richard Rymill SBP

Nice one Greg. I like it. 

Richardr

Blaine Campbell

Thanks Greg! 

 

Kit - I find that there are so many different stakeholders that want to see very slightly different things, the saved view option (which I have used in other tools) is generally more time consuming and I end up with a long list of saved views, which becomes less helpful. I'm still a beginner with this smartsheet, so as I learn, I guess things will become more intuitive- so your option may be more attractive to me in the future, but a hide/ unhide list of columns would be very useful right now!

 

Thanks!

Richard Rymill SBP

Blaine

You may well find that Using Reports to create the correct view that each stakeholder needs to see as "Their view" of the one master sheet, would provide exactly what you need by way of selected criteria displaying only the columns need for their "View". Reports include Gantt now aswell, so look just like the original sheet. 

Try that, I think you will like it?

Then use the Publish facility and Link to provide real time reports in View Only mode which your stakeholders can save to their desktop. 

RichardR

Cameron Blackmon

I use the reporting feature and like it very much to customize views that pull columns from other sheets.  That being said, reports do not have the "alert" or "reminder" functionalities.  It would be great if those tools were added to reports.

Kristina Dojillo

Hi all,

Cameron - I agree with you!

 

We do like the Reports feature because it pulls various columns from the master sheet so that different employees/stakeholders/departments can view only what pertains to their needs.

 

However, many people have requested alerts (notifications/reminders) from their individual reports (not the sheet) so that when they receive the alert email, they only see the columns in their report (and what has been changed) instead of the MANY columns in the master sheet.  

ctc

The ability to hide and unhide large numbers of adjacent columns would be an essential tool for me. Doing so manually is a loser. While a report of only the essential columns would provide less visual clutter, my users would need to be able to toggle between open and closed columns to enter data frequently. Switching back and forth between a report and the master sheet is a bit too last century for a product as cool as Smartsheets. Adding an indent feature to columns, similar to that for rows, would be slick. Alternatively having on/off toggle access to save views would also work.

Brad Jones

+1 vote to this feature request.  While saved views could also solve the problem, the ability to unhide a cluster of columns without manually dragging them out is a useful feature.

 

In response to Kit,

 

If you could highlight two columns and then use a dropdown or right click to unhide the columns between those two (ala Excel) that would be swell.

 

 

Are the saved views available as a feature yet?

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Brad-- Thanks for this feedback! I've passed it on to Kit internally as well. Saved views aren't available as a feature yet, but we are currently working on the Saved Filters Kit mentioned above, so there's definitely an effort being made to focus on ways to customize the appearance of a sheet on a user-by-user basis.

Jamie Bachman

Yes, the drag & expand the column line does unhide it when there is only 1 column hidden between 2 unhidden columns. 

The issue I have is that as the PM, I manage the sheet using columns that many of the users and contributors do not  need to be bothered with. I keep most of them at the far right of the sheet hidden. I would like to just unhide 1 or 2 specific columns at a time. 

It makes it very cumbersome to make any updates because I have to scroll through all of them from left to right and back again. Freezing the most important columns on the left will not help unless I had a 4th screen to expand the window to fill 2 - 21" screens. 

Also - when presenting the info from the sheet in a meeting, unhiding 1 column for an ad hoc request becomes a visual nightmare.

 

rlafournie45586

I would very much like to see custom views. I have many columns and different users do not need to see them all. I would like to see a custom view allowing specific rows and columns to be captured and saved as a custom view.