Show Multi-Contacts with a JOIN(COLLECT(...) formula -- working, but not showing as contacts

Paul Newcome

I (prematurely) set up a thread surrounding this that details everything including a screenshot as proof that it does work (sort of). Feel free to add to it if you come up with anything.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/82311/formula-to-populate-multiple-usable-contacts-in-a-single-cell

Paul Newcome

@Kayla So it looks like we are back at square one unfortunately. My only suggestion at this time would be to create a list of every possible variation, and then you would be able to use an INDEX/COLLECT. The downside... Depending on how many variations you could have, that could turn out to be an absolutely massive list to manage.

Kayla

@Paul Newcome - THANK YOU for your help! I do hope Smartsheet will figure this one out soon -- it sounds like it would be helpful to a lot of us. I'll play around with some options to get around this in the meantime.

Paul Newcome

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Please don't hesitate to Submit a Product Enhancement Request when you have a moment. The more that are submitted, the more they know we want this feature.

Interestingly enough, even though they are showing as text values, automations can still send to those cells that only have one contact in them.

LizTo

@Paul Newcome and @Bassam Khalil

Do you know if there have been any updates or developments on this since 2021? Having join collect result in usable contacts instead of text email address would be immensely useful. I'll submit a Product Enhancement Request, too.

kcollins

@Paul Newcome Did you ever find a consistent solution here?

Andrea_Thompson

@Paul Newcome,

Hello Paul! Do you know if there has since been an update on this topic? Is there a way to use a formula to output multiple usable contacts into a single cell?

And if there is no change, do you know of a way to populate the contacts into separate cells? I have a list of clients in one cell (multi select dropdown), and I am trying to match each of those to their assigned account manager on the same row. TIA!

Paul Newcome

@Andrea_Thompson There is still no way to output multiple usable contacts in a single cell via formula.

Typically I would say outputting them into separate cells should be possible, but it would depend on your exact needs and structure. Are you able to provide more details and possibly some screenshots for context?

Andrea_Thompson

Hi @Paul Newcome,

Thank you for your response!! See screenshot below. Could I use an index match formula in the Assignee columns to pull the assignees for each of those 3 clients into 3 separate cells?

Or maybe I will need some helper columns to parse out each of the client values first?

Ryan Catling

It's almost 2025 and I'm guessing no-one, including smartsheet has solved or fixed this yet?

Paul Newcome

@Andrea_Thompson (sorry for the delay / missed the notification) and @Ryan Catling. Please see below thread from another user:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/123433/combine-emails-into-a-multiple-contact-column-multi-contact-column