How to populate dropdown value list from another sheet

Stelios Balomenakis

I only recently started using Smartsheet and I was astonished this is not possible.

Maintaining a dropdown adds an extra operational process that is prone to human error.

I have no idea what your dev teams backlog looks like but I doubt there could be a lot of features in the pipeline that are more important than this.

Jaroslaw Solak

I have been asked to re-develop our company costing tools I have designed for Excel into a Smartsheet database. I have just found this thread and face-palming myself thinking what the heck I got myself into. Is there really no work-around? How am I supposed to progress now?

Rodney Stowell

Man I am truly bummed that this is not available. This puts a hole in the work flow that I am trying to create. To be able to update a list and be able to pull said list from another sheet and have only one sheet with the data makes life so much easier. Please, please, please put this on a fast track to get this ability available to use.

firestorm

Just submitted another enhancement request :(

Cool

I've been trying all reference tools to achieve this simple functionality without success (vlookup, cell link, etc.) I was starting to think that I wasn't good enough. Now by reading this thread, i realized that simple functionality is just not there...

Jennifer Murray

Desperately needs this capability. Seems like a basic feature that Smartsheet should have.

Jeff Pindak

Is this coming out soon?

Smart Sheet is increasingly becoming a very tedious program to maintain.

There are so many issues with how manual basic tasks are.

The overall process and workflow is great, but are we really supposed to have many users available with admin features to maintain lists that could potentially be prone to error or deletion? Or is the owner really expected to do this?

We cant use drop downs with the same data across multiple sheets?

So now we have to add the option in every drop down across all sheets we want to use it in?

This reminds me VLookup. Smart Sheet is advancing GREATLY over the years. But something like VLookup took years. Quit trying to build fancy 10,000 foot view POS's and get some basic functions down please.

Robert Cozby

Adding my voice to the growing crowd!

I need to keep track of products in development, and I need a way to select the product packaging to tie a product to a type of packaging.

But we also add custom packaging as needed for special request products, and that is an entirely different department, but if I could sync the dropdown menu to their packaging list, I wouldn't need to manually check back to their spreadsheet every time and copy/paste. I might as well just not even need a drop down at that point.

I'm going to join in and say this is an incredibly basic feature, but I fear that the developers possibly wrote themselves into a corner without considering some basic features like this. From my time in software development, you can tell that the developers aren't versed in software flexibility when certain rigid features will ONLY work when used EXACTLY as intended, and Smartsheet runs into that issue often especially when compared to Excel or Google Sheets who allow incredible flexibility going as far as allowing programing languages.

That's why a lot of templates I was trying to use for my purposes simply didn't work due to my projects not needing to have tasks, team member assignments, or having set in stone milestone dates and deadlines. Unfortunately as much as I'd love to be open ended with product development, none of the useful templates or features worked for me. It'd be one thing if I was trying to do something more complicated than what Smartsheet was designed for, but I was literally just trying to do something far simpler and Smartsheet just couldn't be used in that way.

Roxann L.

Any update on this? The more I work in SmartSheet the more I have concerns that it can't really replace excel as there are just basic functions it does not have that Microsoft Excel could easily handle. Having to manually update and keep a dropdown list is asinine. At this point I am out of workaround options for what I am trying to achieve - this was my last hope and it seems the platform falls short. Very frustrating.

Grant Lagimodiere

I am also amazed this basic functionality is not included. Manually maintaining dropdown lists completely defeats the value of most workflows. Now I have to port everything over to Office360 Excel. Not happy!

Thaddeus Christian

This function is critical to collecting meaningful and consistent data from multiple users on forms. It is strange to me that this isn't possible. I have submitted several update requests over the years. The answer is always "soon". Wonder when "soon" will be changed to "Because we listen to the comunity that has been asking for this for 5+ years we are actually working on it finally and it will be released on x date."

William Hadley

It is sad that I am astonished that something so basic is not built into Smartsheet. Lucky for me, the astonishment will subside before the weekend is over, and I can take this knowledge into my meeting on Monday in which Smartsheet will try to sell an enterprise subscription to me. I think, based on the lack of functionality and lack of anyone within the company caring to communicate this concern with potential and existing customers, I know what my recommendation will be. It is unfortunate, because Smartsheet was a compelling option right up to the point when I realized this basic feature was unavailable and ignored for over five years. I would be scared to see your backlog if you have not gotten to this request by now.

Miranda Jaroneski

I'm here in 2021, also begging for this to be in Smartsheet.

Simon Wiles

Added my enhancement request... A much needed feature.... (if not essential)

Matt Lynn

Agreed... the automation of drop down population is basic/essential.