Column Tooltips

Michael Lockwood

I am looking for a way to have tooltips on column headers in a sheet.  The reason is say you have a large sheet that is being used for data collection.  Some of the fields people may not understand exacly what you are looking for, so having a way to put in a tip or description would be great.

Heidi Decker

Hi Michael,

What we are doing is using the first couple of top rows in each column to discribe what it's function is. Much like if you pull up a template like the Smartsheet Formula Examples sheet, you will see they have the top row of each column explaining what it does. Maybe that will work for you.

Peace.

Mattisphere

I'd add to Heidi's approach to lock the rows once you have the tips entered. General best practice is to have rows at the top for summary data and descriptions.

Michael Lockwood

I get the idea of locked rows with the descriptions but when those descriptions are a bit long it would make columns very wide and take up a few rows.  So I, with a colleague, came up with an alternate way of handling this situation.  We created a spreadsheet that has all the definitions in it and attached it to the sheet.  We then lock the first row and state in the primary column to review the attached Excel file for column definitions. 

J. Craig Williams

Michael,

 

I do the same thing for many sheets I create but use a Smartsheet instead of Excel (or Google Sheets).

What is the advantage of using an Excel file?

 

If you keep the info in an external file, you can attach it directly to the sheet, you lose the visual cue that the attachment is there, but that can be handled with a bit of training.

 

Craig

 

smartineer

Hi there,

having tooltips or a similar function would be very handy.

I do not like to mess around with work-arounds. They are often complex and some people are failing applying them.

Hope smartsheet will implement this function.

 

BR Gerald

Audi Gaudi

Hi,

Is there any improvment for this situation ? 

We are exactly looking for the same options described by Michael few years ago...

Thx

JamesR

It,s done

 

See my post

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/column-descriptions-here-last