Reports & New Columns

Hello - it is possible to add new columns to a report? Ie - add new blank columns? Looking at a strategy for planing where reports issue up to date information, and each team adds on their own relevant columns of information, driven from a Master planning document. Any experience with this, or do reports only generate info from existing sheets, and not permit new columns to be added

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Andrée Starå

Hi Jean,

Unfortunately, it's not possible to add columns in a report because it's just showing what's available in the sheet(s). You'd have to add them in the sheet(s).

Hope that helps!

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Mike Wilday

Yes, if you add the columns in the original sheets then it would also be available to add to the reports and be updated in the reports. Have you considered adding the columns to the original sheets and then hiding them in the original sheets? They can still be added to the reports even if they are hidden in the original sheet.

Daniel Morriss

This is a significant limitation to collaboration.

I need to share reports - as opposed to publishing them - with team members and also external consultants so that they can edit fields. In order for the reports to show all the data, those users need to be shared to the source sheets.

One of the sources however contains GDPR restricted data, which cannot be shared, although there are a couple of columns in that source that do need to appear (read-only not editable) on the report.

The ideal way to address this would be to add an extra column to my report with cell linkages from the appropriate cells on the GDPR restricted report.

But I can't :-(

I can guess why this hasn't been done - because those cells would'nt relate to the row architecture the report is deriving from the source sheets? Therefore changes to row order in a source sheet would reflect in the report, but the linked cells might stay in position.

Would be grateful if the Smartsheet team could look into this and consider.

Perhaps a simpler solution would be the ability to share source sheets 'in the background' i.e. so that full access isn't given but the datasets (columns) that the report references are visible and editable within the report?

Thanks in anticipation!

Brenda B

I agree 100%, it's a severe limit to using sources to collaborate. Smartsheet, please consider adding this capability! I'd be happy to share a reference of what I'm trying to achieve if that helps.

Thanks for your consideration.

sgaonkar

i am still unsuccessful building a summary report. I added 1-2 sheets to build a report, but it only display system generated columns and nothing from my sheets. Any idea why this might be happening. I did open 2 support tickets last November and still not answered. Any pointers anyone can provide since you have build a report?

Genevieve P.

Hi @sgaonkar

It sounds like you may have selected Summary report instead of Row report.

A Summary Report will only take the System Admin columns and the Sheet Summary Fields in the side panel of the sheet.
A Row Report will look at the Columns and Rows in the actual grid of the sheet.

See: Overview: Report Types

Try creating a Row Report to calculate your summaries instead! Let me know if this helps.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Eliana Davalos

I completely agree with Brenda and Daniel above. We have Divisional sheets, which I would love to round them up into one "All Division" Report so we can do weekly updates there. However, because every week, we add new checklist and new comments columns, it seems like it would just be too time consuming to have to add 2 new columns to EVERY Divisional Smartsheet first in order to be able to utilize them in the Report.

It would be SO nice if Smartsheet had a feature where Column(s) could be created and added to multiple sheets OR where a column could be added to a Report and that column could be copied to all sheets that are pulled into the Report.

Hopefully someone at Smartsheet likes this idea and could expedite it.

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