Dynamic Data Validation with Columns from another Grid

Andrée Starå

@Paul Newcome

The difference is that all the Dropdown Column options are housed in one sheet, making it more straightforward to keep it up to date and update all other current and new columns.

I wanted to clarify that it is an option that might help simplify the process because of Kayla's comment about it being multiple locations.

Make sense?

Kayla Q

@Andrée Starå and @Paul Newcome, thank you for your assistance.

I think this comes from my ignorance of Data Shuttle. I've been trying to fiddle around with it, but running into issues, as it's not recognizing that I've entered a source.

In the above example, I'm trying to upload a massive file with pivot tables, so that may be the blocker.

For this specific drown down menu use case, I can try to upload a much smaller file - maybe I'll have luck.

I would much prefer @Andrée Starå's approach, as I only want to maintain multiple drop down columns in a single sheet.

Paul Newcome

@Andrée Starå I thought that's what we were already talking about:

"I have several sheets that all have cells with the same drop down menu options. Instead of updating 5 sheets drop down menus every time I need to add an option, it would be much easier for me to maintain a single drop down menu within a separate sheet that I could reference in other sheets, much like data validation lists in Excel."

@Kayla Q So you will first need to create the Smartsheet that has the dropdown options going down a single column. Then you create an Offload workflow in Data Shuttle to export this sheet and store it somewhere. I usually set it to be an attachment on the sheet so it is easy to locate and verify that things are working properly.

Then you would create the Upload workflow pointing at the sheet containing the dropdown column that you want to adjust the properties in and using the attachment as the source.

Andrée Starå

@Paul Newcome

Ok. Maybe I missed one of the comments or something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Kayla Q Happy to help!

Kayla Q

Thanks @Andrée Starå!

I'll give it a go.

Paul Newcome

@Andrée Starå I was hoping you knew some kind of trick I hadn't thought of yet. Haha.

Andrée Starå

@Paul Newcome

Unfortunately, no other tricks this time! 🧙‍♂️

Kayla Q

@Andrée Starå and @Paul Newcome I GOT THIS TO WORK!

Well, I got it to work partially. The drop down workflows are working, but I have a different Data Shuttle use case that is failing. I'm 100% certain I've selected a Source, but Data Shuttle keeps telling me I haven't selected one.

Paul Newcome

That is odd. Is the source currently blank?

Kayla Q

@Paul Newcome, no. There was a specified source.

The source is an incredibly complex pivot table. Could that be the issue?

Paul Newcome

I haven't seen that be an issue before, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. I would suggest reaching out to Support to see what they say.

tgulrajani

If we don' t have access to data shuttle, is there a workaround this to be able to look up a drop down list from another sheet?

Paul Newcome

@tgulrajani Your only options would be third party apps such as (possibly) Zapier or leveraging the API.