Formulas not processing for ages

Colin_G

This is a weird one, and it's been happening for some time.

I have a sheet that people add to, in a batch copy and paste style. There are a few columns to the right of the batch data that process the cells and gleam certain information. It's nothing resource-intensive: e.g. in one cell we might have a person's team and sub-team, so the formulas in the columns simply extract the team in one column, and the sub-team in another. A couple of other columns then Index Match against another sheet to pull data, and finally there are a couple of Formula Helper columns that either fire up a checkbox or not, depending on the criteria (again though, not a complex formula).

Now, when someone puts a batch of data into the sheet, Smartsheet does what it does and the formula copies down automatically. However, no results actually show for a while. Sometimes it can take days! It's like it sometimes waits for another person to go in and start playing around before it fires into action.

So the formulas themselves are not intensive. I've streamlined them as much as I can using @row and @cell where necessary. I've tried copying and pasting the values only where possible to minimise the number of formulas. I've tried using the new Column Formula function. And there are only just over 5000 rows which isn't a lot of data! 19 columns, including the formula columns. It can't be at the limit of the sheet or it wouldn't work at all, but it just takes ages to process and it needs to happen immediately or there's absolutely no point using Smartsheet for this purpose.

What am I doing wrong? Other sheets are using the information that is processed in the formula columns, but I don't think that impacts on the performance.

Any ideas? It's driving me mad.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Colin_G

Have you tried in another browser or the one you're using in private/incognito mode?

I'd be happy to take a quick look.

Can you maybe share the sheet(s)/copies of the sheet(s)? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@workbold.com)

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Colin_G

Thanks Andree - I've just shared a version with your email without names or email addresses in the sheet. Haven't tried another browser (we have Google Chrome and I can't imagine Explorer will make it better! Also it appears the same for everyone, so I'm sure it isn't a browser issue).