Sorting based on row color

Rich Rotkirch

Is it possible in Smartsheet to sort by color so that all rows in the same color comes after each other ?

J. Craig Williams

Rich,

 

How is the color determined? Conditional formatting or manually?

If the first, you could likely key off the same items that the conditional formatting does.

 

If you don't already use conditional formatting, then you could try this:

1. create a new column "Row Color"

2. use conditional formatting on this column's value instead of manually (might be quicker too). The value could be a number or text or both (1, blue, 1-blue)

3. sort on this column as desired.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Craig

 

 

 

Stan Ward

Good idea Craig.  I was thinking something similar.  I like the solution you have put forward.  Still, it might be nice to be able to sort by color. I sometimes use color coding of a "category" column, with the color being the large macro category and the text value for a more specific category.  It gives two dimensions to the categorization with one column.  When using reports, it would be great to be able to sort by both the color of a cell (and possibly other attributes) as well as the cell value. 

 

You soluton certainly works, but adds another layer of work to the process.  Still, it works.  Thanks!

 

-Stan

J. Craig Williams

Stan,

 

Thanks.

Does it matter only that all colors are grouped together or does the order of the color sort mean anything? 

I wouldn't want to argue with someone on whether light blue comes before or after dark blue (though one could do most colors by temperature and then there is a defensible order). Oh, so I guess I would like to debate it.

 

I like the two tier categorization idea. 

 

Craig

Stan Ward

Good question and good point Craig.  I think just grouping.  With that said, I would say light blue comes before dark blue ;-) And I guess someone at some point would have to pick an order, so maybe just the natural spectrum would make the most sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum

 

For my immediate need, I have added another column to my sheet for additional categorization as a solution to what I wanted to do with the colors.  As I have sat with this, sorting by color is feeling like gold plating of smartsheet, i.e., too expensive to implement for something that can be done another way, and would likely complicate the UI.

 

Thanks again for your earlier post that help me think through this.

 

-Stan

J. Craig Williams

Stan,

 

You are welcome.

I would use the visible spectrum too.

 

I have a very long rant about the way the hockey clock counts down and up, driving on both sides of the road, toilet paper rolls, and world peace that I might share on LinkedIn someday. If I can rewrite it so I don't sound like a complete nutter.

(I am crazy, but not a completely. I think.)

 

There is another recent thread about merging cells that has me thinking a lot about categorization and how to convey it quickly and easily. I'm not there yet.

 

Craig