Contact list display/format as email address not name

William.P

Hi all,

Although I found a thread from 2015 which partly answered my question, I would like to put the it again for updated context and clarity.

I have many users in my smartsheet profile and use the contact column type in most of my sheets.

I do a lot of list exporting and often need to provide email addresses for a particular filter or sort for my lists.

When I have email addresses associated with names in my address book I find that I cannot display the email address in the column because it defaults to the assigned name.

Hence I cannot have a contact displaying the email address if there is a name associated with it.

So when I try to copy/paste or export a list I necessarily get mixed results if I have used real contacts in the email column (usually next to a Name column anyway):

• joe blogs
• Jerry Smith
• alonzo.b@someplace.com
• Alonzo B

Where the contacts would include the name and email address i.e. joe blogs {joe.blogs@blogs.com}

It seems I can go into each entry and delete the name field and this "fixes" the issue leaving me with the email address but is a second step for each entry that has a name assigned in my account smartsheet contacts.

Ideally it would be good to be able to use a contact list and specify the display format in the column type - otherwise I seem to have to enter the email address again next to the contact row and manage a separate column for Surname, First Name then email (for e.g.).  Even then I seem to get results that convert the email to the name and others where it does not - especially if I have retyped the email.

 

 

[EDIT/UPDATE] I seem to get a reliable result when I:

1) double click on the contact to bring up the contact detail, the email address is pre-selected

2) I hit [ctrl-c] to copy to clipboard

3) I hit cancel to close the contact detail

4) I hit [ctrl-v] to paste the copied full email into the field

This is very manual but does give me a column of fields I can copy to a spreadsheet, table or email to provide a list of addresses to someone from the main sheet I maintain.

Andrée Starå

Hi William,

Here's an excellent workaround from another post.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/extract-email-address-only-contact-list-column-upon-export-spread-sheet

Hope that helps!

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

ro.fei

Has this been fixed/updated yet? This really ought to be a formula, getting the emails in a format where it's easy to copy/paste is invaluable.

DanR

I believe I may have found a workaround for this. I often want to use an email column for automation contacts and to display to others outside our company and smartsheet system. The problem is that once a column is designated as a Contact column, only the person's name is displayed. That doesn't help when you want to list the person's email address in public-facing reports. Today I devised this solution.

My sheet is populated by form input. I ask people to input their email address in a Text/Number column named Email Address. On the sheet, I added a Contact column named Email Contact. In the Email Contact column I entered this simple column formula: =[Email Address]@row. The address is converted to a contact address.

Now I can use the Email address column to list people and their email addresses, and the Email contact column for automations.