Can cell formulas be passed to Smartsheet from Formstack?

Mike Mitchell

I want to create a custom ID column from contents coming from a Formstack integration. Submitter email plus submission time from the form will make each row ID unique as they are added, and also have meaning to the users of the sheet.

To do this I have created an invisible custom field in Formstack that will populate the ID field in Smartsheet with appended contents from two other columns in the sheet:

=[Email]@row + " " + [Survey Time]@row

This works great if I type it into the sheet itself, but when coming over from Formstack, something inserts a single quote ahead of the = so that it's interpreted as a text string and not a formula, like this:

'=[Email]@row + " " + [Survey Time]@row

Thus, it doesn't work. Is there a way to avoid the single quote being added? Can I escape the = sign with a backslash or something on the Formstack side? Any other ideas?

Thanks,

/mike

Andrée Starå

Hi @Mike Mitchell

Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's not possible at the moment to do it automatically in Smartsheet without the API or similar, but it's an excellent idea!

Please submit an Enhancement Request when you have a moment

As a possible workaround, you could use the Smartsheet API to do it I think.

I also, have a memory of a workaround that could help.

I'll get back to the post if I find it.

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Mike Mitchell

API is unfortunately not an option, as my content is coming from Formstack directly and I don't have control over how that happens. I will also ask their support in case it's something that they can address from their side.

When you say it's not possible, can you elaborate? Is it not possible to populate any Smartsheet column with a formula, or just the ID column? Seems like a pretty huge limitation to not be able to populate a spreadsheet with formulas...

/mike

Andrée Starå

@Mike Mitchell

Without the API or service that is integrated (through the API), I don't think it's possible to add formulas from an external source.

Make sense?