Used in Formula for <unknown sheet>
i see this everywhere. i know its from when i delete projects and such, they will leave this leftover trace/breadcrumb ... but why? And does this impact performance? some cells in some sheets have tons of these, so im just wondering why they dont auto remove themselves or how to easily manage those as opposed to clicking every cell of every sheet and then manually clicking to delete link to <unknown sheet> for every occurrence.
Best Answer
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If you delete a Sheet that has a number of cross-sheet references looking into other projects, the small grey arrow and the sheet reference link will automatically disappear from that Source sheet without you needing to make any edits or manually delete them.
The <unknown sheet> title identifies that there is an active sheet looking into your current sheet, but you are not shared to it (so you do not see the name of it displayed).
To manage these, you would need the Admin or Owner of that other, active sheet to delete the reference into your current sheet through the Sheet Reference Manager on their side (see: Formulas: Reference Data from Other Sheets).
I hope this helps!
Genevieve
Answers
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If you delete a Sheet that has a number of cross-sheet references looking into other projects, the small grey arrow and the sheet reference link will automatically disappear from that Source sheet without you needing to make any edits or manually delete them.
The <unknown sheet> title identifies that there is an active sheet looking into your current sheet, but you are not shared to it (so you do not see the name of it displayed).
To manage these, you would need the Admin or Owner of that other, active sheet to delete the reference into your current sheet through the Sheet Reference Manager on their side (see: Formulas: Reference Data from Other Sheets).
I hope this helps!
Genevieve
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Hi @Genevieve P., can I get any information about the sheet linking in, if it's an Unknown Sheet? I think the answer is no, but I have a database that's a little sensitive and I'd like to know something about who or what is linking to it.
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No, if you're not shared to this unknown sheet then there isn't a way to get information about it. However, only collaborators that are shared to your sheet could create a link or formula looking at your data.
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@Genevieve P. Hello Genevieve. This is not working for me. I've deleted all the formulas on sheet A which didn't work. So I deleted all the Rows/data on sheet A, still didn't work. Finally, I deleted the entire sheet A but in all attempts, the cross sheet link (and grey arrow) are still not disappearing from sheet B.
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Hi @Ami Veltrie
If you're working in Sheet A, you can use the Reference Manager (found by right-clicking on a cell) to delete a cross-sheet reference or cell link! Let me know if that helped.
Cheers,
Genevieve
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Hi @Genevieve P. Thank you for reply! Sheet A no longer has any data in it, I deleted everything trying to get rid of the cross-sheet links.
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Hi @Ami Veltrie
Even if the rows are cleared of data, the reference will still exist; were you able to find the Reference Manager to delete out the reference completely? It would look like this:
Cheers,
Genevieve
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This topic just came up for me. Shouldn't we be able to at least see who created the reference, especially as the owner of the sheet and data, we should at least know who is accessing our data via reference. The Activity history shows "Cell Link", rather than who created it. Maybe a new product enhancement request is necessary?
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