Changing Primary Columns

Glen Urquhart

I have a number of smart sheets that all 'talk' to each other, and feed various dashboards and reports.

Slight problem in that the primary columns across them all are different - partly an oversight when setting them up, partly due to different people in the organisation setting up different sheets which I have since united.

I would like to unify them but as there are quite a few dashboards and reports fed from them I'm fearful of messing it up!...

When you move a cell, or selection of cells, it also adjusts the path that reports, dashboards, sheet summaries, and other formula etc is fed from, so my question is this...

Would it work if I:

• Insert a temporary column in to the smart sheet
• Move the data from the primary column into the temp column (hopefully also moving across all paths?)
• Move the data from the column I now wish to be the primary, into the primary column
• Move the data from the original primary column into the newly vacated space
• Delete the temp column

Any advice welcome and appreciated!

Cheers, Glen.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Glen Urquhart

This really depends on your set-up - what types of widgets you're using, what information is in the Report, etc.

If you went through the steps you list above then it would adjust where the content is located. This means that any formula pointing to a specific column would stay looking at that column, but now there's new data in its cells it so it may error or return the wrong data.

Metric Widgets in a Dashboard will work the same way: you've selected a specific cell to display, so if you update what data is in that cell (ex. through copy/paste), the Dashboard will reflect the new text instead of moving to follow the previous content.

If you don't change the name of the columns then your Reports won't break... but they may display data in the wrong place, so I would presume you also need to adjust the name of the column, too. This means you may need to re-select the column in a Report.

If you're able to provide screen captures of some of this data and the source location (and how you need to adjust it) I'd be happy to clarify how the sheets will adjust/change or what other updates may need to happen... but please block out any sensitive data.

Thanks!

Genevieve