Primary Column

Hello,

New user of smartsheet and I am doing okay but one thing I am stuck on is what is the function/technical impact of the primary column when creating a sheet/grid? I see it has to be a number or text field, it can be blank, it can be duplicated so what then is the purpose of identifying it as the primary column? To me the primary column would be a unique identifier for that row, but maybe I am being to database structured in my thinking?

It has to have some sort of impact to how you can manipulate the grids/sheets and functionality in smartsheet but it just isn't clicking with me. I have watched YouTube videos, read through the help and searched this forum but still don't get it. Maybe I am making more out of it than there is?

Oh well, appreciate any help understanding.

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

Chris Mondeau

Hi @Richard Corris One of the main features of the primary column is how it's used in different view of the app. For example, if you switch to card view, it's the header of the card, or if you're using the outlook web extension, it's the main field displayed in you mail browser when searching.

The way I try to use it is asking the question, "what are my users going to search for in this sheet?" so for orders, it might be an order ID, or if it's a project, then I'd use the primary field as the project name.

I'm sure others have suggestions as well, that's just how our team uses it :)

All comments

Chris Mondeau

I'm sure others have suggestions as well, that's just how our team uses it :)

Richard Corris

Thank you, I was going way too technical with it. That makes more sense now.

Peter Spung

I would like more control of the data entered in the primary column, so that users of a shared sheet don't enter bad or malformed values. Has anyone had any luck adding edit checks on data entered into the primary column? The column properties don't appear to allow me to specify this. And, automation isn't quite fine grained enough, or with enough logic, to catch and prevent bad value from being entered with a row/cell change occurs.

I'd appreciate any suggestions that you may have... Thanks! Peter Spung | pspung@northcarolina.edu

Sign in to join the conversation!

Quick Links

Component react.discussion.discussions had an error.

ref must be one of: categoryID, siteSectionID, category, category/categoryID, category/name, category/description, category/url, category/allowedDiscussionTypes, locale, siteSection, siteSection/basePath, siteSection/contentLocale, siteSection/sectionGroup, siteSection/sectionID, siteSection/name, siteSection/description, siteSection/apps, siteSection/attributes, layoutViewType, discussionID, commentID, page, sort, discussion, discussion/name, tags, breadcrumbs, discussionApiParams, serverDraftID, serverDraft.