Workbook template set for new project

Jacquie Hannibal

Hi there,

My first post to this forum and somewhat new user to Smartsheet.  Can anyone advise if below is possible and if yes, how to do this or point me to help on this topic.  Thanks a million!

 

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I want to create a template set for a  suite of document that I need to create for every project.  

 

What I do today is use an Excel workbook that has multiple tabs.  The first sheet in Excel has the information that I enter for the project and then that data is linked to all 15 sheets and those get auto populated with the information from first tab.

 

Is this possible in Smartsheet?  

Richard Rymill SBP

Hi Jacqui

Sorry to disappoint, but NO you can't do that in Smartsheet without seeking the assistance of an outside App. 

That said with careful design of your sheets and workflows there are still dozens of benefits over Excel and quite a lot of those benefits are just not available in Excel. 

What can work well is Smartsheet for what it is good at,  and still use Excel for eg Statistical analysis of data exported from Smartsheet. 

 

If you are new to Smartsheet I suggest you expore all the easy stuff which will give you some big quick wins... then if you still need some of the more challenging stuff, we can talk you through using Appsheet, Azuqua, Zapier, SQL Server as a supporting Database and Power Bi to see a nice dashboard. 

 

Hope that helps?

Richardr

Adam Overton

Create a folder called "Project Template"

For each tab you would have in Excel, create a Smartsheet

Use linking between cells to link to your summary project sheet.

 

When you want to create a new project, you can go to your home tab, right click on the Project Template folder, and choose Save As New.

 

All the linking between sheets will be updated to refer to the ones in the new folder by default. Just make sure to keep this default setting:

 

Jacquie Hannibal

Thank you Adam!  That works - appreciate you taking the time to share your expertise!!!

Adam Overton

Jacquie, I recommend after you do Save As New on the folder, consider renaming the sheets to incorporate your project name or number. I use this pattern, and I have sheets names like Project Overview, Action Items, Milestones, etc, and without renaming you can end up with five Action Item tabs in smartsheet and not know which goes with  which project. 

 

The other thing I do in my template is create a report for each sheet, so I can incorporate them into a Sight (requires Business account) as well. A sight is like a dashboard. I set my Sight widgets so that when you click on them it navigates directly to the sheet so you can edit. I save these reports and the Sight in my template folder so they all get updated when I Save as New as well.

 

Good luck!