All sheets gone!

Anar Pasha

I signed up to Smartsheet few years ago after someone shared a Smartsheet with me. I liked the product and later upgraded to the premium version and used it for few years. However, few months ago when the renewal came up - I let the premium subscription lapse as our work came to a halt due to the pandemic with the intention of upgrading again once work resumed after lockdown. In the meantime I had view-only access to our sheets, which was fine. Yesterday I logged in and everything was OK, but logged in today and all our sheets are gone with only folder names remaining! Do you know if this is a technical issue (data migration, etc) or this is what is supposed to happen? We certainly had no warning that any files would be deleted! We have very valuable info that we cannot afford to lose. This is very unethical!

Andrée Starå

Hi @Anar Pasha

I hope you're well and safe!

It gets deleted after a period of time, but If you haven’t already, I would recommend that you reach out to the Smartsheet Support Team.

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Anar Pasha

Thanks Andrée,

I have sent Support an email - waiting for a response. Do you think they can recover it? As I mentioned the sheets were there yesterday when I last checked.

Do you know what that "period of time" is supposed to be? Certainly I wasn't warned that this would happen and wasn't mentioned anywhere that sheets under a free account get deleted after a certain period.

It's very unethical for them to simply delete data without any notification. At least then I would have the opportunity to either upgrade or backup my data before deletion. Thanks again for your responses.

Andrée Starå

@Anar Pasha

Happy to help!

It's 30 days, but I'm hopeful that the Smartsheet Support Team can help get it back.

Switch to Free Switching to free changes your account type from a paid Smartsheet subscription to a free collaborator account. This option allows you to stop your paid subscription and receive no further charges for it, but still retain access to Smartsheet and any sheets that are currently shared to you or that are shared to you in the future.

When you choose this option, any sheets you own will become read-only and will be deleted after 30 days.

Anar Pasha

Thanks again Andrée for all your help. I'll certainly revert back and write the full details here once I get a resolution from the customer support.

In the meantime, I have one more related question - if I manage to get my sheets back and create backups of the sheets locally, can I then easily recreate the same sheets later on Smartsheet from those local backups once I reactivate the paid subscription when I'm ready to use Smartsheet again?

Andrée Starå

@Anar Pasha

You're more than welcome!

It depends on how advanced the sheets are, but I would not say that it's easy, so it might take some time to recreate them.