Exporting/Backing up Smartsheets with Attachments that are Linked to the Rows they were Attached to

frog learner

Hi,

When I do backup of my Smartsheets, all of my files that were attached to any rows are saved to a separate folder. That's fine, but my problem is, I don't know which rows those files were attached to. I need to find a way of linking files to the original rows that the files were attached to.

Is there a way to backup my sheets in a way that logs which files were attached to which rows? Maybe having a column that automatically listed the filename(s) of the attachments for that particular row? That seems to be a fix.

Example: Sheet A has a Row 43 that has a file attachment called "abc123.jpg." If I had a column that automatically listed the filenames of each row attachments, I could just open the excel spreadsheet in the backup, and find that row 43 had an attachment called "abc123.jpg."

frog learner

I got a response from Smartsheets that told me there is no way to add such a column.

My workaround was to open the attachments tab, sort by rows and take a screenshot of each filename and its associated row.

A really silly and unnecessary workaround to such an obvious problem. I hope this gets fixed in the future.

ssnova12

I Can't believe they cannot help you with this i have over 6000 attachments Please Smartsheet live up to your name

 

William Huang

Hope Smartsheet provide the way to export the sheets with all attachments, and the attachments were linked to the original row in the future. It should be very useful feature for your users.

JeremiahHorstick

Approaching this same dilemma we implemented a simple solution:

We rename the attached document to the row id when we upload it.

This is a solution to move forward with. It's a laborsome extra step, but is the only immediate solution we could think of.

We also wanted to avoid duplicate file names for backup.

For sheets that have a lot of attachments a column with a formula to list the document names would be nice. Even better,  a mass renaming feature.

I believe each document has a unique id that is not accessible. Having access to this information would give users the ability to re-associate attachments to a table after a back up.

 

J. Craig Williams

Jeremiah,

Is this only insurance or have you had a need to restore the backup?

Craig

JeremiahHorstick

Its insurance only. I've never needed to restore a back up. 

J. Craig Williams

Thanks for the answer.

I haven't needed one yet either.

I suspect the need for a backup will come from one of two sources:

1. User error (or intentional harm)

2. Desire to migrate to another platform.

Neither gives Smartsheet much incentive to make a better backup, in my opinion. Most cloud solutions I looked at are about the same and likely for the same reasons.

I have it "on my list" to develop a better backup using the API, but I've found most people don't want to pay for insurance until it is too late. 

Craig

 

David Hayes

how about someone (like me) wanting to make a backup in case smart sheet loses the data and I need to rely on my own backups to restore into my smart sheet account without losing all of my formulas etc.   Isn't that a valid reason to have more comprehensive backups?

J. Craig Williams

David,

I suspect that if Smartsheet suffers a catastrophic loss like this, we will all have bigger problems. I'm sure they have some sort of redundant systems in place. I'm sure Amazon (Smartsheet runs on AWS), does too.

If we (the consumer) lose our whole account, Smartsheet must be able to restore some backup point. At least, so I tell myself.

What we consumers need, I believe, is something that allows us to recover at least yesterday's version. It is a difficult thing to determine what that means, however.

In my two+ years of consulting I have had several customers steal my sheets and remove my access. I keep weekly backups (just Save As New the workspace) so I don't lose everything. I can't just 'restore' the sheets I no longer have access to, which is a good thing, in my opinion. I can think of far more use cases where I would not want the user to restore after losing access.

Back to the point of comprehensive backups. Formulas are part of it, so would conditional formatting, filters, formatting, alerts and actions, all of the things that make a sheet unique. Some of this can be captured using the API, some can't. Even if they all could, it would probably be better to make your own system than build one to backup someone elses.

Assuming it was ONLY formulas that needed saving (ie that Smartsheet's existing backup in conjunction with whatever add-on was built was sufficient), does this have add-on value? If so, how much? I haven't seen a market need (for a third party do this) because with a phone call to Support, I can get my sheet or workspace back, usually.

Sorry for the long winded reply.

Craig

JeremiahHorstick

As time goes on and we are using Smartsheet as an approval workflow for invoices, bids & receipts we are approaching the 5000 row limit in a sheet. Exporting the old files to an archive, having the document associated with row data is important. I've also learned that each document has an ID as well, which one can retrieve with the API. We are still renaming the files to the row ID to prevent duplicates.