Automation Copy Row to Another Sheet - Data adjusted but old data still copied to other sheet

Jose Goa

I have experienced something weird with Automation of 'Copy Row to Another Sheet'

So I use smartsheet to have people perform stock count of materials once a week.

To achieve this, I create 2 sheets, (1) the list of materials and (2) the Count Sheet. The sheet containing list of materials has automation of 'Copy row to another sheet every week on Wednesday at 1pm' with destination of Count sheet. The operator will then perform stock count every Friday, and fill in the Count sheet.

The problem is, when I made any changes eg. the material number in the sheet containing list of materials, this doesn't get reflected on the Count sheet. So the 'old' data prior to change still shows up on the Count sheet

This looks like a bug, so I deleted the original sheet with list of materials and create a duplicate - I changed the copying time to Thursday at 1pm.

What happens now is that the original data from deleted list of materials sheet still gets copied to the Count sheet on Wednesday 12pm, then on Thursday at 1pm there would be another list copied from the new sheet containing the new materials...

Has anybody experienced similar issue before, or have any idea on how to fix this?

Can we report this somewhere?

Paul Newcome

That sounds like expected behavior to me. The Copy Row automation will only insert new rows (will not overwrite existing rows) and the data that is copied over is static meaning there is no direct link to the original data.

Jose Goa

@Paul Newcome Perhaps I wasn't clear. Every week, the old data is getting copied to the Count sheet. Even though data in the row is changed in the meantime, the change will not be reflected on the following Wednesday. When I add new row in the list of materials, the additional row will not get copied.

Even when I delete the original List of materials sheet, the first 'original' list of materials still gets copied week in week out every Wednesday at 12pm.

*will edit the post to clarify this

Paul Newcome

Are you able to post some screenshots of both sheets as well as your automation?

Jose Goa

See screen shots. The original List of Packaging is just exact copy of the current list packaging. I don't have the screenshot because in the end I deleted that sheet to try solving the problem.

Paul Newcome

So lets Just say that in the Primary Column of the List sheet you have "A". On Wednesday you update that to "B". But then on Thursday when the row copies over it pulls "A"?

Jose Goa

Yeah. That's correct.

Also when I delete the whole row containing A (let's say row 2) and create additional row (let's say row 34) with B, (schedule is unchanged to Wed 12pm). The following Wednesday the old row with A will be copied, but not row 34.

Another thing I tried was changing the timing of the schedule to Wednesday 4pm.

What happened was the original list with row 2 containing A still get copied on Wednesday at 12pm. Then at 4pm, another list with row 34 containing B (but without row 2 containing A) will be copied.

Paul Newcome

That sounds like there is a glitch somewhere. It definitely should not be pulling data that no longer exists on the sheet. Have you tried reaching out to support yet?

Jose Goa

no I haven't, how can I reach out to support

Paul Newcome

https://help.smartsheet.com/contact/smartsheetapp1?tscb=1