Links

Lisa Reichnach

Is there a way to globally add/delete links between sheets or does each link need to be added/delted individually? 

J. Craig Williams

+1 vote for this feature

 

Craig

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Lisa, I'd be happy to pass this feedback along to our Product team--can you give me a better idea of how you'd like to be able to globally add and delete links? For example, would you like to be able to select an option from the Sheet Actions menu to "Remove All Links" or are you looking to link/sync entire sheets, rather than specific cells?

J. Craig Williams

Kennedy,

 

While a "Remove All Links" would be a nice first step, I would prefer a way to see all the links and choose which ones to keep/discard.

Especially the 'broken' links. When sheets are renamed or archived, there is no way to easily clean them up.

 

Craig

Lisa Reichnach

I have 2sheets, Contractor Badges and New Hire/Terminations. The term date is linked to both sheets. I have discontinued the Contractor Badge sheet and replaced it with another sheet. I would like to replace the link in the Term Date cell in New Hire sheet to be linked in a cell in the new sheet. Is there a way to globally do this or does each cell have to deleted/relinked individually. 

 

Thanks

Kennedy Stomps

Craig--Given your comments, I'm visualizing some kind of enhanced version of the current "Link from Cell in Other Sheet" window that would highlight all linked cells on the sheet and give you options to bulk edit the links, remove them, etc. Am I on the right track here? If not, let me know how you imagine interacting with cell linking in a perfect world and let me know--it's not something I use as frequently as most users here in the Community, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

Lisa, there isn't currently a way to bulk change all linked cells on a sheet to link to another sheet. At this point, you would have to select all the cells to be linked in the New Hire sheet, then use the cell linking menu to link these to the new sheet. They don't necessarily need to be linked one by one, if all of the linked cells are in one column, for example, you can select all of the cells you want to be linked, then go into the cell linking menu and select a column full of values from another sheet to link in.

J. Craig Williams

Kennedy,

 

At the basic level, if there was a spreadsheet like interface (sound familiar?) the following columns:

 

LOCATION - workspace, folder, sheet, or even just a hyperlink like in a Report

ROW and COLUMN reference - which cell the link is located

- that could be two columns, I'd have to give it more thought.

LINK DIRECTION - into the sheet or out of it.

VALID - perhaps a check flag (result) showing whether Smartsheet considered the link valid.

perhaps ( and again, more thought needed here) would be to show the other side of the link too.

Either you end up with twice the number of columns or twice the number of rows.

Since a link is a "thing", I think one "thing" per row is easier to work with.

 

All that data is fixed - while I could see wanting to change the links, that would be hard to program, describe or use.

 

The next two columns would be:

ENABLED (or ACTIVE) - the link is currently enabled for use

- the user can change this here instead of going to one or both sheets (but should still be able to disable/enable the link locally)

FLAG FOR DELETION - some way for the user to mark the links to be removed completely. 

- at its simplest a "remove all invalid links" instead of having to select each one.

or just deleting the row functions to delete the link.

That one may be prone to operator error.

 

Does that clarify it Kennedy?

 

Craig

 

J. Craig Williams

It would be nice if it was easy to find and clean up the deleted ones throughout the system:

 

 

The red arrow is a nice touch.

Craig

Francesco Tiberi

Hello, has there been any progress on this topic?

I have a sheet with links from other sheets that have been deleted, and cleansing it is entirely manual, one cell after the other.

J. Craig Williams

There have been no announced changed (either implemented or upcoming) but that does not mean they are not working on it.

Craig

Susan Peck

Hi all, just checking to see if this feature has moved forward?

If not, does anyone know if there is a way to find Invalid Links to other sheets?  This would be for cells that had valid links in the past but now the link is invalid because someone moved or deleted the original link.  

Thanks,

susan