Duplicating a Large Workspace

Paul Newcome

I've run into a bit of a problem...

 

I have build a rather large workspace. Everything ties together. It consists of 147 sheets, reports, and dashboards spread throughout various folders for organization. There is A LOT of cell linking and cross sheet references in various forms for various reasons.

 

I was recently informed that the workspace needed an overhaul. Some services we were tracking are being dropped, and new services are being added. This will affect literally every aspect of this workspace.

 

What I want to do is to "Save as new" the entire workspace, so I can do some preliminary testing on changes to make sure I have everything covered without affecting the current workspace as it will be in use until the new one is rolled out with the updates.

 

Here's the problem... You can only save up to 100 items. I have 147 not including folders.

 

If I save it in sections, I will have to go through and re-link everything and update all cross sheet references to the new sheets. Some of these sheets are close to maxing out on the cross sheet references. Re-linking and and updating everything to reference the new sheets will be a massive undertaking in and of itself, and I don't have that kind of time or energy.

 

Is there any way at all to get around this "100 item" limit so that I can take advantage of everything being automatically linked to the new sheets?

Alejandra

Hi Paul,

There currently isn't a way to bypass this limit. When you have a moment, submit a Product Enhancement Request to let our Product team know that you'd like to have this functionality in Smartsheet. 

Paul Newcome

Alejandra,

 

Thank you. I have submitted a request. I also reached out to Support that same day, but I know that sometimes community members have come up with rather genius workarounds to things that "couldn't be done".

 

I was able to figure out a solution with the help of Support that, while not perfect, was able to get me what I needed.

 

Basically I created an empty folder within the original workspace. I moved the absolute bare minimum to this folder. I then saved that folder as new into the new workspace. I was able to then put the original workspace back in order.

 

The problem I was running into is that everything in the workspace is linked together in a very intricate build that I have been working on full time for over a year now. I needed those sheets to stay linked to each other, so I knew I needed to be able to save everything as new together at the same time.

 

Unfortunately you cannot select multiple items and save them. You can only select one item to save as new (even if that one item is a folder containing a bunch of items).

 

I was able to figure out the bare minimum of what I needed for my testing which fortunately was under the 100 item limit (barely).

ShelbyWarren

@Paul Newcome I'm running into this issue as well. I'm building a PMO workspace that's already over the 100-sheet limit (that's with only 50% of the workspace created so far). There are a LOT of cell linking/copy row functions that would be crazy to have to redo every time a new project folder is created.

Have any workarounds been created for this? Or has anyone heard if Smartsheet plans to up the limit? (around 250 sheets would be nice...) 😁

Paul Newcome

@ShelbyWarren Are you using control center?

ShelbyWarren

@Paul Newcome No, the company doesn't have control center and I don't expect them to purchase it.