MultiSelect: Export to Excel Not Useful

Purnima Gore

I have just tested the MultiSelect Function.  When you export to Excel it simply concatenates the items to make a single word

 

For example

What type (s) of room could we book you into?

Double

Single

When exporting to Excel it outputs to

DoubleSingle

That is no help, unless there is a delimiter in the cell, it is worthless in an output.

I cannot find any articles to tell me how to change this.  the only other option is to put a comma at the end of each option within the choice which is a workaround that should be fixed.

Is this a bug?

Kind regards

Purnima

Paul Newcome

This is a great idea. The reason this happens is because the data is stored in Smartsheet as a single text string. If you have not already, I suggest filling out a Product Enhancement Request.

Kara Lumley

Hi Purnima,

thanks for the feedback.

If you expand the cell in Excel, you should find the values are line delimited. 

I will request the help article to be updated and double check that the expected functionality is working as intended. 

Thank you,

Kara

Paul Newcome

Good to know. Using a FIND function for CHAR(10) does produce results. Thanks, Kara!

nadjasimone

Hi Kara,

 

I can see the data delimited when I expand, but I'm trying to separate each value into a separate column and I don't see how to make that work. Any ideas? 

 

Thank you!

 

Nadja

Paul Newcome

Are you trying to parse it in Smartsheet or Excel?

 

The delimiter is a line break CHAR(10). You would need to leverage this to parse it out.

nadjasimone

I was trying to do it in Excel. Should I use the the CHAR(10) function in Smartsheet?

Paul Newcome

The CHAR(10) delimiter pulls through to Excel, but I am not sure how to use it to parse data differently than you would in Smartsheet.

Mike Broglio

Re-opening this. I tried to export to Excel with the dropdpwn list option, multi-select, and the Excel export is combining the answers to a single word, no CHAR(10). Exporting to Google sheets does include the CHAR(10).