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.

akerue

Relatively new user here, excited about Smartsheet, moving my projects over ... until I discovered this bug, which causes inadvertent data loss, and as such has stopped me in my tracks.

When I drag a set of rows with the mouse, the app pops up a message encouraging me to use cut and paste: "HINT: You can also move rows using Cut (Ctrl + X) and Paste (Ctrl + V)." However, this so-called hint, if followed on a collapsed hierarchy, *will cause the user to lose data*. Not only all of the subrows, but also any files attached to those rows. It's easy to test for yourself.

Hi @Genevieve P., thanks for your responses providing a workaround. However, it should not be on the end user to "ensure that the rows are expanded so that you capture all the child rows".

Are you able to advise whether this bug is recognized by your development team, and if there is an ETA for the fix? The issue is not that the implementation is difficult- it works just fine, *if* the rows are expanded first. So there's no good reason this bug should still exist, particularly given that users have been flagging it since March 2021. Thank you for looking into it.

akerue

New user here, excited about Smartsheet ... until I found out the hard way about this bug, which stopped me in my tracks. As implemented, this causes user data loss.

When rows are dragged, the app posts a hint encouraging cut and paste:

But if any subrows aren't expanded, data loss results. This includes any unexpanded subrows, as well as file attachments associated with those rows.

Hi @Genevieve P., thanks for offering a workaround. However, it should not be on the end user to "ensure that the rows are expanded so that you capture all the child rows".

Has your development team indicated awareness of this bug, and/or provided an ETA for the fix? The issue has been flagged since March 2021, almost three years now. Fortunately, the fix is simple (or should be). Thank you.

AWentz

The above 'Copy Row' could work for the solution but there's one issue. When the environment has hundreds of projects and many workspaces, the window to select where to copy to cannot pull up the workspace structure.