My - Smartsheet Wish List 1 Automatically update Column names in reports when changed

JamesR

Hi,

 

When you change the name of a column in a sheet it will adjust the formulae no problem, however it does not update them in any reports being run from the sheet.

 

Please can this be looked at as it is extremly time consumming going through all your reports just to delete a column that is wrongly named and have to re insert it.

 

If you agree Like it

 

Dietrich Koch

...and second, if the column with the changed name was used in a filter within the report, the filter no longer works (Smartsheet is still looking for the old named column, that no longer exists) and has to be updated...

Atus Bartal

+1 vote +5 stars. Very good suggestion 

Kennedy Stomps

Hi All-- Thanks for this feedback! I've passed this along to our Product team to consider for a future update

J. Craig Williams

Related to this, there should be some way to know what is impacted.

This should NOT be dynamic or automatic - the performance impact for the system to go check if something was broken because of name change would be horrific and not valuable most of the time (in my opinion).

But those time is would be are crucial to not getting a call from someone because you forgot to update a Report you didn't even know about.

 

Craig

Keith Singleton-Turner

Definitely would love to see the updates happen when a column name changes. Would also be useful to have a facility that allows you to list what reports refer to a given sheet.

neil.pattinson90956

Agreed, I have multiple reports (Around 300) that are driven by 4 separate but interlinked Smartsheets which we are continually developing and improving.

Sometimes this development involves changing column names that are displayed in columns and/or used as the means to filter the report and, as this post describes (and unlike with formulas which are dynamically linked) the reports then display columns with no data as they can't find them any more or don't work properly because the data in the column was used to filter what was on the report.

The original post for this was in September 2016 which was responded to straight away however still this issue persists.