Sheet to populate another sheet?

Looking for a way to minimize damage (deletion of rows of data) of a critical - and very large - sheet. Seems there's a 'glitch' that causes this and it's happened twice in the recent past. Things I thought of but don't think will work... "locking rows" doesn't work b/c team needs to edit/update frequently; creating a "form" for data entry doesn't work b/c they need to see the info in the other row cells (it's basically a call log).

? - Is there maybe a way to prevent deleting but allow editing?

? - Create 'child' sheets where each person has a "sub-sheet" with their rows and their entries feed into a 'master' sheet with collective data?

Anyone? Anyone? lol

I've only been using Smartsheet for two weeks so appreciate ANY help I can get. Thank you in advance!

Tags:

Answers

  • Kimberly Loveless
    Kimberly Loveless ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    There are two things my mind goes to.

    You can do a sheet for each person with them feeding into a master report. (similar to the "sub-sheet" idea above) that way the items are bidirectionally editable. If you do just sheets that are related with cell links rather than using a report they will only be able to be edited on the source sheet.

    The second requires the Dynamic View add on. This one you can limit people to only see the rows assigned to them and limit what cells in the row they are allowed to edit while still allowing them to view cells in the same row.

  • Thanks, Kimberly! I like both ideas - in this situation, they may need to see others' work so I think the 2nd option - a sheet for each person with them feeding into a master report - would be the better solution for me. I'm assuming I do this using formulas. Also somewhat new to me. (I'm a nurse by trade... not much tech experience there, lol!)

    Just some added info... the sheet was created by importing ~7500 rows of information. The dept supervisor adds their names to a field in the row to indicate to them which are their assigned institutions. This can sometimes change so hoping there is a way to auto-update the 'sub-sheet'.

    Really excited about working my way through this. Really appreciate your guidance!

  • Actually, I think I found the right key words to find the instructions on your suggestion... "cross-sheet formulas". Here is the link to the help page in SS...Formulas: Reference Data from Other Sheets.

    Thanks again, Kimberly!