Links not carrying through to published report

Ellen Puffe

Hi everyone-

First post to the group from a fairly new Smartsheets user, hoping my question has a simple solution. 

 

My communications team uses an editorial calendar to track our upcoming communication items, and from it, I created a report for our senior leaders. The majority of our written pieces are composed and stored in Google Docs, and we hyperlink to the stories in Google Docs from the Smartsheet. The rub is that although the links work from the actual sheet and in my owner's view of the report, when the other viewers get the report via email, the links to the external docs to not carry through for them to click on. Am I making any sense? They do also have the direct URL to the report, but would prefer to be able to link to the Google Doc from the email. 

 

Thanks, in advance, for your time and attention, and for any help or insight you can provide!

 

JLC

I have run into this situation as well and would love to hear a solution.

Tim Meeks

Ellen,

 

I assume the report is sent as a PDF attachment to the email and thus the links aren't live and don't work?

 

So a couple of options.

1) Send the report as an .xls attachment.   The link in the cell would be hyperlinked and accessible by other users.

2) Publish the report (botton left on the report) and email the URL to the users. The published report would allow the users to "view only" the rport, but the URL's would be active. 

 

However, I'm guessing #2 may not work as this may be a scheduled report. A scheduled report or sheet sent goes only as a PDF or .xls attachment.

So #1 may be your best option.

 

If my answer is not correct, please provide a little more detail.

 

 

FOLLOWUP - I tested the sending of the Excel spreadsheet and the hyperlink. Once I clicked on the hyper link and then Enabled Editing and double clicked in the cell with the URL, the hyperlink became active and allowed me to click on the link.

thanks,

Tim

JLC

Thanks for the detailed response, Tim, as this helps me as well - can always count on your 2 cents! I wasn't aware of the Enabled Editing tip.

Ellen Puffe

Thanks, very much, for your detailed reply, Tim. I have sent them the URL via email and those folks are set as View Only, already. It appears, however, that they want to have clickable links right from the scheduled email so, I'm going to set up the report as an .xls as you recommend, and hope that will suffice. 

 

Thanks, so much!

Ellen

Ellen Puffe

Well, just got the email generated from the scheudled report, and the links did not carry over in the .xls format, either, even when downloaded to my machine. I'm also not finding the "Enabled Editing" feature....not really clear on these instructions:

 

"Once I clicked on the hyper link and then Enabled Editing and double clicked in the cell with the URL, the hyperlink became active and allowed me to click on the link."

 

Thanks, again...