Copy Parent and Child Rows

Megan Chapman

Is there a simple way to duplicate a parent row and all Child rows?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Megan Chapman

You can use the copy/paste function to copy rows and duplicate the hierarchy. You'll need to ensure that the rows are expanded so that you capture all the child rows:

Then when you Paste this into a new, empty row it will maintain the hierarchy of the copied information. See: Copy and Paste Cells, Rows, Formulas, Hierarchy, and Hyperlinks. This article has some other tips and tricks for copying hierarchies

Is this what you were looking to do?

Cheers!

Genevieve

Genevieve P.

Hi @Megan Chapman

You can use the copy/paste function to copy rows and duplicate the hierarchy. You'll need to ensure that the rows are expanded so that you capture all the child rows:

Then when you Paste this into a new, empty row it will maintain the hierarchy of the copied information. See: Copy and Paste Cells, Rows, Formulas, Hierarchy, and Hyperlinks. This article has some other tips and tricks for copying hierarchies

Is this what you were looking to do?

Cheers!

Genevieve

Suzanne Raphael

I feel like maybe the question was really Is there a way to copy the parent and all child rows without expanding them?

So, is there? I don't think so, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Suzanne Raphael

If you use the "Copy Row" option from the dropdown menu for the Parent row, it will copy over all the children as well:

See: Copy rows from one sheet to another 

Cheers,

Genevieve

tlharp101

@Genevieve P. Copy from the drop down does not copy the children for me. Copy to Another sheet might but I'd like to be able to duplicate a large number of steps multiple times and it seems like you can only do that if you expand all rows.

Genevieve P.

Hi @tlharp101

Thanks for clarifying that you're looking to copy within the same sheet! In this case, you're correct - you will need to select the specific rows you want to copy, Parent and/or Child rows, which means you may need to expand them first.

Cheers,

Genevieve

tlharp101

Thanks @Genevieve P. . Sadly, that's really painful with a 1500 line project plan and the inability to expand/collapse just a section.

Suzanne Raphael

Agreed, painful. It is bewildering to me that after all this time—I've been a faithful Smartsheet user for going on a decade now—some just really basic user-oriented stuff like this has just been ignored. Laurels/resting...the surest way for software to die.