The 25,000 cell reference limit is puzzling

francisco.fernandezlugo50066

Dear Smartsheet:

I am a bit confused by the 25,000 cell reference limit.  In my specific case I am simply trying to VLOOKUP from a table where I have 700 rows and 17 columns.  That equals 11,900 cells which is less than 25,000 cells. 

So, why am I getting this error?  It creates an incredible amount of frustration and dissatisfaction with your product. 

Please help.

Francisco

 

Brian W

I ran into the VLOOKUP cell limit pretty quick in my usage. I started using INDEX/MATCH instead and haven't had any problems yet. Maybe it will work for you as well. The benefit is that you only reference the columns you are searching, rather than an entire grid. More info here:

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/index

francisco.fernandezlugo50066

Thanks Brian... I guess you don't work for Smartsheet.  My question is valid, I would like them to solve my math simple question.  25>12.

Andrée Starå

Hi Francisco,

What's the error message you're getting?

Have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

francisco.fernandezlugo50066

The message reads: "You can only reference a total of 25000 cells (combined) from other sheets.  Please select fewer cells and try again."

krongley

Same here. I have 511 rows/ 35 columns - that is NOT 25000. Super frustrating.

Paul Newcome

Are you selecting the entire columns or just those x amount of rows in each column?

Marc Hauge

We hit this ridiculous limit.  We have a large organization and this limit blew up our whole project that has been working superbly.  Not sure where we go from here.  I do not believe we have a good way to fix unless Smartsheet raises the limit to at least 100,000.

 

I have a summary tabulation sheet for each of our users (over 300) that uses cross references to a few master sheets that are growing in row count daily.  I need to keep a years worth of data before I can archive.  Now my summary sheets aren't calculating because I have hit the limit half way through the fiscal year.  Might be time to migrate away from Smartsheet, too many limitations with row cell counts and cross references, etc...

Kristina Johnson

I'm also running into this issue quite regularly and would love to hear whether or not Smartsheet has any plan to increase the limit in the near future.

Andrée Starå

Hi everyone,

Please submit an Enhancement Request when you have a moment to have your vote added

A New Way to Submit Your Feature Requests

To make your Enhancement / Feature Request count, send in the form above because there isn’t a guarantee, it will be registered otherwise.

Original Post: https://community.smartsheet.com/announcement/new-way-submit-your-feature-requests

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

RoseG

We have a Control Center developed with multiple toolkits for a huge enterprise client. We are now experiencing the 25,000 limitation as well as the 250,000. This is crippling, since the point of Control Center is to have access to enterprise-wide data.

I see a number of other people have been experiencing similar difficulties. Can you please indicate:

1. Whether an enhancement to this number is currently in development?

2. When this obstacle will be resolved?

This has rendered our VLOOKUPS, MATCH and INDEX useless.

Thanks,

Rose

Hend_Farah

We hit the same problem in our organisation , we just recently started using smartsheet & we are a small team ! Very disappointing . 

AndrewM

I am experiencing the same problem.  I first ran into the 5,000 line limit which is going to be a pretty big limitation on its own.  Now that I've built multiple reference sheets to feed our Master Asset lists, its telling me that the sheet has more references than the 25,000 allowed.

Even once I deleted almost all of my rows, just to see the process start working (down to 20 rows and 11 columns), it still says I'm maxed out and won't stop #CALCULATING.

 

Michael H

Smartsheet has a solution called Data Mesh which can solve this challenge.  https://www.smartsheet.com/marketplace/premium-apps/datamesh

 

Emma R

This is still an issue a year later. I am trying to do a VLOOKUP formula on a table of 7 columns and 2912 rows. I am NOT highlighting the entire column, just those cells. 7 x 2912 = 20384 < 25000, yet I get a pop up telling me to select less than 25000 cells. Please explain what I am missing so I can understand this limit better.

Paul Newcome

@Emma R Have you looked into INDEX/MATCH instead of VLOOKUP? It is much more flexible and it allows for potentially a lot less cells being referenced. You would only select the column you are pulling from and the column you are matching against. It doesn't matter which one is on the left or the right, and it doesn't matter what is between the columns.

=INDEX({Range to pull from}, MATCH("text to search for", {range to match against}, 0))