Timestamping comments

Jennifer Howe

Hi

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to time stamp any comments placed into a sheet?  I know you can always look at the history of the cell but I was wondering if there was any way that the date would automatically be placed in the cell when someone adds content.

 

Benjamin Walker

You could add a Modified by date/time system column to the sheet!

Jennifer Howe

Yes that has been one solution.  However the team really does not want to add more columns or rows to our sheet.  We basically just want to make it look like how it does when you look up cell history.

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Jennifer-- Another option would be to use the default Comments (formerly Discussions) column, which automatically attributes and timestamps every Comment!

Jennifer Howe

Unfortunately we already use that as other dialogue for the project.

I will talk with my team and see if that is a viable solution

Jeremy Myers

I use a text replacement utility called Shortkeys for this function everywhere in my work.  You can get a free copy that will allow up to 15 shortkeys.  Essentially you have a trigger key and code that triggers and inserts a string.  Mine for time and date is: "trigger key" + "now" which produces the below. 

 

08/16/16 at 6:25  JM:  

 

 

Kennedy Stomps

That's a brilliant solution, Jeremy! Here's a link to Shortkeys, if anyone is interested. I know a few of my colleagues here at Smartsheet really like TextExpander, which has a similar function as well,

Catherine Smith

Hi guys.  I'm trying to accomplish the same, which is to identify  the last date a Comment was added specific to the SmartSheet Comment feature (see screenshot). Creating a Modified Date column via a system column only identifies date for changes made to other columns of data, but not the Comments feature (see screenshot)

 

 

 

Any suggestions?

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Catherine-- There's not currently a way to pull data from the Comments column (e.g. time last comment was added) into a column in a sheet, but I've added your vote for this to our enhancement request list!