Problem saving a large sheet when insert/remove/move rows.

I have a large Smartsheet with 1472 rows, 30 columns and about 27,200 cells with formulas, mainly IF() functions plus three simple conditional formatting rules. The page will load in a few seconds and simple changes save in a few seconds but if I insert or delete a row near the top of the sheet, or move some rows from near the bottom of the sheet to the top of the sheet, when I try to save it, after a few minutes, I get an error box with "Unable to reach Smartsheet, check your internet connection" and the changes have not been saved. My internet connection is fine. It feels like I'm running into some hidden Smartsheet limitation. I understand that moving a row from the bottom of the sheet to the top requires virtually all cell references in all formulas on the sheet to be revised and that takes time but I'm willing to wait and planned to organize the sheet to minimize this type of thing as I've done in the past. Anyone have an idea what's going on?

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Comments

J. Craig Williams

Jim,

That's odd. Did you contact support?

Craig

Jim Hook

Hi Craig,

Yes, I exchanged several emails with support and they finally came to the conclusion that the size of the data to be saved exceeded the 1MB save limit in Smartsheet. Unfortunately there's no way for the app to know beforehand if the limit is being reached so you end up with unhelpful error messages.

Their first suggestion was to break the sheet up into two or more smaller sheets but that would be very inconvenient for me and the other users. Fortunately I found a simple way to eliminate many thousands of formulas that were not being used at the moment (and easily restore them as needed) and that allowed me to move rows to where I wanted them. Hopefully I won't run into the problem again.

Jim

Jessica Chandler

I have the same problem, only I don't have any formulas in the sheet at all. It seems to happen as soon as I try to add a background color to some of the columns.

EricM

i have this same issue after i add a row. The save function works otherwise, but as soon as i add a new row to my very uncomplicated, reasonably sized sheet, the system gives me this error.

Screen Shot 2017-04-28 at 7.16.18 PM.png

Jim Hook

Eric, the only problem I've ran into with saves have been when my sheet got too large. I've had to break up several very large sheets into two sheets to get them to save. My current largest Smartsheet is about 1300 rows by 22 columns with some complex formulas in just a few columns. It doesn't sound like you have the same problem. It sounds like you are triggering a bug of some kind that crashes Smartsheet requiring you to reload. I run into this once in great while but it's not repeatable.

Another thing that might cause a problem is having the same sheet open in two different browser tabs at the same time. I don't do that anymore. Are you waiting until the little floppy disk icon goes blue before trying to save your sheet?

Finally, I've noticed that links seem to take longer than they used to to propagate through several sheets. I make extensive use of Smartsheet links and I've noticed that it can take 20 - 30 seconds for links to finish updating. I don't see how that could be causing your problem though.

Best to contact Smartsheet support.

J. Craig Williams

I second "Contact Support".

The API update this week includes changes to "Retry" and other evidence indicates they may be making changes to improve speed (more so than the usual changes).

I learned of a problem related to connections that occurred for an hour or so on Friday 2018-04-28 but it was resolved quickly.

I hope things improve for you.

Craig

Chad

I am having the same problem Jim. I am moving old records from one sheet to another. They are moving from that one sheet to the other but are not deleting form the first sheet. If I try and delete even one row at a time it comes up with this message. It does not matter if I try and delete one or many rows the same message comes up.

Thanks

Moving Rows.PNG

Jim Hook

Hi Chad,

I've dealt with this issue several times but have now organized most of my sheets to avoid it. Here are some suggestions that might help.

1. I have one sheet that I cannot reduce the size of and it will not load in Chrome, the main browser I use. I discovered that it will open, edit and save if I do it in Firefox so when I need to edit that sheet I do it in Firefox. You might try a different browser to see if that helps.

2. I take it that you want to keep the old sheet in use but without the rows that have been moved. Even deleting one row can cause Smartsheet to have to revise all the formulas below the deleted row which can be very time consuming causing Smartsheet to time out possibly with the error message you are getting. If possible could you simplify your sheet to eliminate some of the complexity? If you have many rows with identical formulas you could delete all but one of the rows with the formulas, do your moves and then, if it was successful, restore the formulas in the remaining rows. That's messy but it did work once for me.

3. If the move rows process is the root of the problem you could try to copy the cells (not the rows) from your first sheet, close it and load the destination sheet then paste the cells into the new sheet. You would have to go back to your first sheet and see if deleting the copied rows avoids your current problem.

4. If you haven't already done so, have Smartsheet support take a look at the problem. I've had mixed success with their help with this sort of problem but it's worth a try.

Good luck!