Master Contact List for use across sheets in a workspace

I have 16 grids that all use a Contact List with 23 of the same client contacts. (1) its a HUGE waste of time to have to populate 23 contacts into a list 16 times and (2) every time a new person joins or leaves the team, I have to go into each of the 16 grids and make the same change. Is there a way to create a contact master list, or group (similar to an email distribution list) that I could reference and it would populate a Contact List. And as people joined or left, all I would have to do is update the master list to add or remove the contact, and all 16 grids would update?

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Comments

SteCoxy

Are you on a multi-user plan (Team, Business, or Enterprise)?

If so, then you may find setting up contact groups beneficial.

Have a look at this article for more info: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1554165-managing-groups-team-business-enterprise-

Paul Newcome

You can also create one sheet that has your Master List then use cross sheet references to pull the appropriate email addresses.

Paul Lambert

I don't believe that either of the comments addresses what Cheryl is hoping to do. This is a common challenge that I have. Across our various workspaces, we have many sheets that have columns that are setup as a Contact List. Since there is no concept as a Master Contact List for a workspace, you have to manually update the column property for each Contact List column across all sheets in the workspace whenever there are changes to a project team. This is extremely inefficient.

Paul Newcome

@Paul Lambert

I don't Groups at all, so I cannot speak to @SteCoxy's solution, but the solution I referred to does in fact provide a solution.

You create one master list. Then you use cross sheet references in a formula or cell linking to pull the appropriate contact based on title or department or whatever other criteria you want to specify.

Then when a contact changes, you simply update the master list and all sheets referencing the master list will update automatically.

Paul Lambert

Hi @Paul Newcome ,

How are you able to use cross sheet references in a column properties value list?

Paul Newcome

@Paul Lambert You don't. You enter the formula directly into the cell. I typically use an INDEX/MATCH, but VLOOKUP can be used as well. I just prefer INDEX/MATCH because it is much more flexible and robust than VLOOKUP.

Vaibhav Khasgiwala

@Paul Lambert

Hello! I'm new to Smartsheet, and what you are talking about is what I am trying to do. I have a sheet as a master contact list with 150 contacts for our organziation. I would like to reference that sheet in another sheet contact column, hopefully to be able to use that list in the form I then create.

Can you give an example of what the formula would look like to reference the master sheet?

Bill Rigney

Paul Newcome,

I'm wondering if you have any updates to your methods for populating contact lists (updates from what you've listed above)?

This is a royal pain for our team and I'm hoping to use some solution like yours to streamline.

Thank you in advance,

Bill Rigney

Paul Newcome

@Bill Rigney What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Andria Hoyle

Paul, are you sure you can use Index Match or Vlookup for a Contacts column? I can't even update a Contacts Column with Data Uploader with an attachment--I was under the impression Contact columns for Smartsheet had to be manually assigned.

Paul Newcome

@Andria Hoyle Yes. You can populate a Contact column using a formula, but you can only populate one contact. It won't allow multiple contacts even if you have the column set up as such. But populating a single contact will work.

Luis Salguero

@Paul Newcome

I appreciate your insight on this matter.

I created a Ticket Intake testing sheet and I used an INDEX/MATCH formula to pull the email from a Master Contact List sheet. Please see attached images.

I will type a name in the Team Member field (e.g., Name 1, Name 2, etc.) and I get the email in the Assign to field, which is where I have the the INDEX/MATCH formula.

It works, but is there something that I'm missing?

Thanks.

Paul Newcome

@Luis Salguero I don't see anything missing. Is there a reason you are asking? Are you not getting expected results?

Luis Salguero

I'm testing it now and it seems to work fine.

Thanks!

Luis Salguero

I had forgotten to edit the column properties to Contact List for both sheets (i.e., source sheet and target sheet). It works very well. Thanks.

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