All cross sheet references randomly removed from sheet

Justin Ramos

Cell unlink pic.PNG

Hey all, I have a weird issue. I have a sheet we use for our install calendar and randomly all the cross sheet references will be removed. This has only happened one time in November and again this Wednesday. I spoke with support and they said it might have to do with the automations but I'm not sure why the automations would remove all the cell links? Well, it happened randomly again today so I wanted to see if anyone has encountered this issue? This is the only sheet it happens on and again, it's totally random. Since Wednesday, I have had multiple people use the sheet since today and it happened again this morning. It is time consuming to relink everything and it affects everyone in the organization when things aren't connected. Any thoughts?

Paul Newcome

Have you checked the source sheet(s)?

Basically if there is a cell being referenced by another sheet, there is a little black arrow in the bottom right corner. If you select one of these cells it lists out every sheet that is referencing that cell and gives you the option to remove. If you click on remove, it will remove every instance all at once.

Justin Ramos

@Paul Newcome When I look at the manage references, there are broken references to metric roll up sheets but I think that's because of the initial removal of all the references from the install calendar source sheet. We have another calendar for a different location with all similar automations and cell references that has never been affected. I can't be sure but I really doubt the users of our calendar are deleting references, that's why I wanted to show the activity log because it's weird all references were deleted at once and not by a specific person

Rafael Hayashi

Hi @Justin Ramos

I am facing the same problem. Did you solve this issue ?

Marvin Daniels

This has happened in our shop once or twice. You can check the activity log to see who was responsible for adding/deleting the cross-sheet reference, so you can educate the scoundrel who deleted your hard work. I think the only solution is to rebuild the references, but you may be able to recover from backup too.

Justin Ramos

@Marvin Daniels @Rafael Hayashi I never figured out how this happened. It hasn't happened since but I had the same issue you had it seems. When I asked the employee what he did, he said he didn't do anything out of the ordinary but it always seemed to be him so not sure!

Rafael Hayashi

@Marvin Daniels @Justin Ramos In my case, is always the same person, and he said that he didn't do anything.

If we look It happen just some seconds after he opens the sheet.

I will try to create again the same smartsheet and see if it solves

@Marino Anderson

We experienced something similar.

Had 18 cross cell references in a sheet that worked well for 2 years.

On Monday Smartsheet randomly eliminated the last 3. For over an hour, try as we may to add the 3 back, a minute later Smartsheet would eliminate again. Added one at a time, used different reference names, etc. Activity logs shows it was "Cell Link" that eliminated the references.

Solution: made a duplicate of the referenced sheet and point the references there. It worked!

Chad Guevremont

I just had the same thing happen to me on a couple of the sheets I've been using. no one did it. I checked the references and they all say that the reference is broken. It's not even letting me fix them easily. When i went in to fix them the link is actually still there so I need to erase it then make it all over again. Has anyone figured out why this is happening?

Michael Culley

This needs to be fixed immediately. This has happened on multiple occasions and causes a lot of commotion when employees see their metrics all out of whack.

The weird part is that in the activity log it does show as if someone removed it but that is a bug/glitch. The person who supposedly removed it doesn't even have access to touch cross sheet references in my case. It just literally blames it on the person who happened to view the sheet when the references disappeared. It definitely seems like it's triggered randomly when someone views the sheet.

Paul Newcome

@Michael Culley Have you reached out to support yet to have them fix the issue?

Michael Culley

I'm sure I did back when it first happened but now it was just easier redoing the references and moving on.