Pasting into an Auto-number does not auto-number in sequence

Hi all,

I just pasted a list of about 20 records into a autonumbered sheet,

The auto numbers did not appear in sequence. The paste is as per the original sequence, the autonumber field, jumps around with out rhyme or reason?

e.g the fields sequence 179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 195, 197, 200, 188, 193, 196, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206.

Seems a bit strange. And Yes I do have a prefix of ENH- on each number.

Anyone had this

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Comments

Jeremy Myers

Sorry, what is "ENH"? Is that an argument to a function?

Autonumber assigns a fixed value to a row when it is saved. Did you clean out a bunch of data from existing rows and then paste the new data into the blanks? The <autonumber> would not reset in that case.

Tim Meeks

hte prefix shoudln't matter.

Do you have a Filter set on the sheet?

Contact support@smartsheet.com.

Christian Wells

Jeremy, The ENH is a Prefix to the Auto number.

Tim, There was no Filter.

A sequenced list was pasted in, the list stayed in its sequence, the text and other columns, that is.

The numbering that was Auto-Assigned jumped around, as per the prev post.

Its no big deal, I just want unique identififcation, this is just unexpected behaviour of smartSheet.,

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Christian,

Just so I'm understanding you correctly, did you paste these values from an auto-number column into a text/number column? Did you or someone else apply a sort on that text/number column afterward?

With the ENH- prefix, these are text values, and will sort in an alpha-numberic fashion, sorting by each character individually.

It's also possible that a sort was applied on a completely different column.

If you don't think the above happened, reach out to Support@Smartsheet.com, provide them with the name of the sheet, email address of the sheet owner, and the approximate time (with your time zone) that this occurred.

They may be able to track down the cause with that information.

J. Craig Williams

I think what he is saying is that he has an autonumber column and is pasting data to the rows (not into the autonumber column though) and when Smartsheet is finished with the paste, the Smartsheet autonumber is out of sequence, as if the 5th row was pasted before the 3rd row.

Testing on my system now as it may relate to auto-fill not working (not to resolve it, but to get more clues)

Craig

J. Craig Williams

I have successfully duplicated the results.

I pasted 100 rows into an autonumbered sheet.

Eventually, I got this:

I'm pasting columns (20) to the right starting with column [Example]

The RowID column is the Autonumber column.

Format T0000

The last paste was 100 or so rows starting on row 213 (the first light red row).

You can see that the next rows are 319-328 and then the next column is 224 - which should have been the first new row autonumber.

The {TestGetNum] is just a formula to show the numbers are not sequential - displays "bad" if the count jumps by something other than 1.

The conditional highlighting is just another aid.

Craig

Christian Wells

Hi All,

Happy Australia Day to all the Aussie's out there.

Had a great day off, and hence I have not responded in a day or so.. And thank you Craig for testing in my Absence...

I was only pasting a smaller number of records (20-30), but same behaviour.

There was not sort, filtering or anything like that when pasting.

For my Example I still received a Unique number and can just resort to get the sequence. And probably this is the same for all.

But that said, this is a behavioural issue of smartsheet pasting Rows, Unfortunatley all the yelling of abuse or swift applicaiton of corporal punishment does not work on software to bring it into line.

if the sequencing is necessary, there is a workaround (sort the list)..

Thank you all, Im not sure this is a high priority, but nice to be validated in my observation (thanks Craig). Perhaps smartSheet development can add it to their list of minor rectifications.

Christian

J. Craig Williams

From a software development perspective, this is purely a timing issue (in my opinion).

Some part of the save / update sequence is out of sync / not waiting for the proper queue. This is, I believe, related to this auto-fill failure issue and should not be difficult to trace through, assuming the system can be stepped through using a debugger.

I know that software looks easy from the outside. I've chased a lot of "simple" problems in my day, but this one deserves attention.

Craig

Shaine Greenwood

@christian — please email support@smartsheet.com and troubleshoot with them further. This seems like it might be a bug and the support team will want to troubleshoot this with you.