Obvious way to copy and paste formulas only?

Miroslav Vida

I must be just dumb, because I can't figure out how to do this, nor can I find anything useful in searching...

Paste Special lets you paste Values or Formats. Why not Formulas? I have multiple levels of hierarchy in a sheet, and some of the levels use different formatting. I want to copy / paste some complex formulas from one row / level of the hierarchy to another, but I'm not yet ready to make it into a column formula. How do I just copy the formula? It is annoying to have to undo and redo my formatting all the time.

Mark Cronk

Hi @Miroslav Vida ,

To copy just the formula, click into the cell and highlight the formula. Select copy. Place your cursor IN the destination cell and click paste. You have to paste into 1 cell at a time but you won't get the formatting.

There are several articles on how to automatically format a row based on it's hierarchy. That might help you as well. The basic principle is that you use COUNT(Ancestors()) to indicate the level (0 to ?) and then use conditional formatting to format the row based in the hierarchy value. Here's 1 article for you:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/10461/using-hierarchy-formulas-conditional-formatting-to-color-code-rows-in-a-sheet

Good luck.

Mark