Change cell format within a formatted column

Dennis Wierzbicki

This seems a no-brainer but maybe not: I have a column formatted as a drop-down menu, but within this column are other cells that need to be formatted in other ways, such as dates, currency, and others. 

 

Any way to do this?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Dennis

J. Craig Williams

Dennis,

 

Smartsheet's columns are where the types are defined, not in the cells.

 

You can force Date or Checkbox columns to display text by using + "" in a formula

 

=(some formula that return as date) + ""

 

but that is about as far as it goes.

 

Craig

Dennis Wierzbicki

Craig, thanks. Man, I really love some parts of SmartSheet, but there are other aspects that REALLY drive me nuts...like this one. 

 

Seems so simple - I have a calendar sheet to note where people will be on specific dates. The first column is a list of names. Other columns are arrayed to the right with a date identification at the top, and it the cell intersection of date and person, I have a drop-down menu of locations. I'd like to do some formulaic manipulation between the dates, but the fact that I can't format the cell at the top AS a date makes this impossible. 

J. Craig Williams

Dennis,

 

I feel your pain.

In most spreadsheet, the core functionality is the cell. The cell next to it has no real link to it - it could be in a different tab, row, or column for all the spreadsheet cares.

 

In Smartsheet, it is the column. The columns give meaning to the sheet.

In some cases, this rigidness ("oh, would it be nice if this date was just one cell over") can be a bothersome constraint, but once you grok this, it really helps when building sheets.

 

This underlying design is why we won't (I believe) have things like cell merge and pivot tables. I might be wrong about pivot tables, I can see a design similar to Reports that could work, but it won't be (I believe) at the sheet level.

 

Craig

 

Shaine Greenwood

Hi All—

 

Just wanted to chime in and state that I've added your votes for functionality to define types on the cell level as opposed to the column level to our enhancement request list for further review by our Product team.