Re:apostrophe

Funglun Chan

Currently I am pushing data to smartsheet using the API, however, I notice that numbers that have say dashes in front of them to denote them being negative, or any non-numeric elements, causes every record in that column to be pushed as text, together with an invisible apostrophe in front of it that only shows when I click into the cell.

What is the reason for this? As this causes many cross sheet references to fail, especially mysteriously since the apostrophe is initially hidden. Is there a practical reason why the apostrophe is added, or is it something that there are plans to fix.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Funglun Chan

Would you be able to provide examples of the data that's being pushed?

Smartsheet will prepend values that start with a 0 with an apostrophe to store it as text in the cell. It does this so that the leading zero will be retained and displayed with the number. (See: Column Type Reference)

One solution could potentially be to have a helper column set up using the VALUE function to automatically strip any apostrophes from your data (see: VALUE Function). Would that work for you?

Cheers!

Genevieve