Rows being removed

Michael G.

Hi everybody,

my suggestion is to have a new function in the sheet action menu (in German "Blattaktionen") displaying a list of all deleted rows. User and date/time of deletion should be included, maybe also "row number" in the moment of deletion.

Would be very very helpful.

Brad Jones

Michael,

 

The feature you propose could be a useful band-aid.  The core problem in the software, as discussed in the thread, is to stop the deletion from happening in the first place.  Once a row is deleted - it is impossible to restore it in it's original form.  Yes, you can copy and paste the information back in from a backup, but you cannot restore the history of the discussion in the correct format - and you cannot put the history back into each cell so that you can see the dates of the changes.

 

The tracibility you propose is a good thing, and it is better than the current 'nothing'.  So if SS needs a place to start that is a good one.  

In the near future, please, we prefer to have control so that we are not burdened with the task of babysitting our sheets.

Brad Jones

See related posts.  This is a big problem that still needs to be solved.

 

August 2015

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/avoid-shared-person-delete-my-row

 

June 2015

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/rows-being-removed

 

March 2016

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/prevent-deletion-rows-if-it-contains-locked-cells

 

May 2016

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/allowing-team-members-update-smartsheet

 

Related - August 2015

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/find-deleated-items#comment-9452

 

 

Kenyon Bajus

+1 @Brad Jones said.

 

Sometimes rows need ot be deleted, but I need to know which rows were deleted. I'd like to see them in an email with all content in case one is accidentally deleted.

 

Or there should be some sort of feature to rollback or restore rows.

JOHNSCREENWRITER

It's absurd that any editor can go and delete rows, accidentally or intentionally. There is really no reason why anyone other than the admin would need to delete rows. For Godsake please fix this and make it a priority. It's an enormous issue.

Simon Hill

I've just learned about this recently and have been an advocate of Smartsheet for some time. We had some rows deleted so learned the hard way, sheets are now backed up but this is not a solution. This is a huge risk and until it is resolved can no longer rely on Smartsheet.

 

I can see this was raised a year ago, please advise when this will be addressed.

Brad Jones

@JOHN.  I've been screaming this since I started.  It is way bigger than the attention that it seems to have received at their HQ.  It's not in the roadmap and I don't think it's been user tested yet.  So who knows when/if?

 

PS. Please leave the Lord to His work, and Smartsheet to theirs. 

David Friesen

I'm also in need to control rows from being deleted, accidentally or intentionally.  There are many editors viewing and updating the dates and comments columns.  If a row is deleted I have no idea unless I check the backups and compare frequently.  This is a huge issue and risk using SS.  Is this being worked on?

Brad Jones

Still waiting for a solution to this problem.  This can be solved in so many ways, but still the problem persists.  Please fix this Smartsheet.

Daniel Nordvik

Is there any progress on this matter? Has anyone seen any indication that this issue will be adressed? Im afraid our company will have to reconsider using Smartsheet if this persists...

Brad Jones

@Daniel,

While they have mentioned things that might make it easier to recover from deleted rows (something like the upcoming sheet history feature), I have not heard any statements that make me think they take this problem as seriously as we users do.  See the original date of this post.

 

Sadly, recovering from row deletions is a second-place prize to preventing the problem in the first place.

 But, 1year later, I keep beating the drum.  Persistence is my arsenal.

Kenyon Bajus

Amazing that recovering from deleted rows hasn't been impleneted yet. What I really can't stand is the email notifications that rows have been deleted, and they don't even list the contents. let us decide if we want a super long email or not. If the service were free, I'd get it, but it's not.

Alejandro Lamothe1

I had the same problem, and in addition to it, I needed to group the rows by the authors and create a parent row.

The way I solved it, and it may work for you, is by creating a specific Sheet for each user, create the parent row in each sheet, lock it, and then create a sheet with references of all of the parent rows of all of the users, it may be a lot of work but it solves the need.

I hope this helps.

Alejandro

Brad Jones

Thanks for the tip Alejandro,

For many sheets that will work, and is a good workaround if most of what your team does is not on excessively large or dynamic sheets.

Will keep this idea in mind for later.   Sadly, most of our sheets just have too much changing on them to use ths.

PSmith

Is there any way yet to stop users who need to edit data in a row deleting the row. Either by accident or on purpose ?

Rgs

Phil