Display contact as email address only.

Shane Z.

I have a contact list column called (Column 1) that is populated with smartsheet contacts. Depending on whether or not that smartsheet user has filled out their profile, it will display either a name or email address. I have a Alert Someone Workflow that pulls from this column (Column 1) to include their email address in an email, for example "If you have any questions send an email to {{Column 1}}." That workflow pulls from another email to obtain the email address to send to. The problem I have is in the body of the email where I reference {{Column 1}}. What I would like is for their email address to be populated in the workflow not their name.

Devin Lee

This is an oversight by Smartsheet and there isn't a way to extract the email address via formula. There is however a work around that might help. In the bottom left corner there is a a circular account symbol. Click on that and go to My Smartsheet Contacts. From there you can export the data as a csv and reupload it into Smartsheet as it's own sheet. You can then use the previously suggested idea to use the INDEX(MATCH formula or VLOOKUP to populate the email column. Hopefully all the emails you need are in there. If not you can check with other account owners to see if they have more.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Shane Z.

Placeholders in alerts, {{these}}, will surface the display value of the cell, which means that whatever the Contact Column shows in the sheet is the text/value that will be brought into the message. If your Contact has a contact name, then the Name will be what's shown in the alert, as you've found.

In order to guarantee it's always the email address shown, you would need to have another column in your sheet, a text/number column, which lists the email address for each person selected. Then you would reference the {{Email}} column in your Alert instead.

The way I would personally set this up is to have a reference sheet stored somewhere else in Smartsheet with only two columns: a Contact Column and an Email Text/Number column. Then you can use an INDEX(MATCH formula or VLOOKUP to populate the Email based on the Contact selected in your current sheet.

If you only have a small number of contacts in your Column 1, then another way to auto-populate the email address in your sheet would be to set up a Change Cell Workflow which adds the appropriate email to the helper Email column, depending on who was input in the Column 1 cell. (See: Change the Value of a Cell in an Automated Workflow)

Cheers!

Genevieve

Shane Z.

@Genevieve P. Am I understanding correctly that I have to manually input all the contacts email addresses somewhere first? I can't seem to figure out how to make the helper column extract the email address from the existing contact.

Devin Lee

This is an oversight by Smartsheet and there isn't a way to extract the email address via formula. There is however a work around that might help. In the bottom left corner there is a a circular account symbol. Click on that and go to My Smartsheet Contacts. From there you can export the data as a csv and reupload it into Smartsheet as it's own sheet. You can then use the previously suggested idea to use the INDEX(MATCH formula or VLOOKUP to populate the email column. Hopefully all the emails you need are in there. If not you can check with other account owners to see if they have more.

Shane Z.

@Devin Lee Ok thank you. Our accounts are not created manually therefore I don't have them in my contacts, they are system wide contacts for our domain if that makes sense. Thank you for your help anyway, hopefully this feature becomes available in the future. I have no interest of manually maintaining a contact list and emails, nor do I think it's feasible to have people remove their first/last name from their profile, sound like a nightmare to keep up on. Thank you again!

mickbiden2

Thank you for your help