How can I copy all conversations from one row to a row in another sheet?

Jim Hook

I need to copy all conversations from a row on one sheet to the conversations on a row in another sheet. On a Mac, copying the comments by dragging over all of them then using Cmd-C followed by paste (Cmd-V) on the second sheet used to work but that only copies the last few conversations now. I can copy the whole row with with comments to another sheet but the column names on the second sheet don't match the first sheet and will mess things up on the second sheet. I have thought of a couple ways to do it but they are messy and error prone. Does anyone know of a way to do it? I work on a Mac but I wonder if copy/paste on a PC would work.

Jim Hook

I just tried it on a PC and dragging over all conversations on a row, copy and paste into a conversation on another sheet row just pastes the last few conversations. Right click copy/paste works the same as Cmd-C/Cmd-V also.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Jim Hook

Can I clarify, are you talking about the comments in the conversations window, here;

If so, you should be able to select all the text in the Conversations box,

and then paste it into another sheet's comment box as text:

If you're only seeing some of the data pasted in, is it possible that you are reaching the character limit for a single comment? The limit for characters in a comment is 10,000 characters, so I would be surprised if this was the case.

Would you be able to post screen captures of what you're seeing so I can replicate the issue?

Cheers,

Genevieve

Jim Hook

Genevieve, yes, we are talking about the conversations/comments as you mentioned in your reply. Your copy/paste method used to work but something changed a year or two ago. I had been doing copy/paste of the comments in conversations within the same sheet for a few years as a way to archive the comments as projects closed since my sheet named Active Project List had one row per active project and the comments documented the invoicing plan, the invoices made and other project events over the life of the project. My process was simple. First I would copy the entire row for the closing project and then paste it at the bottom of the sheet. Then I would copy via click-drag-copy (via Cmd-c) all the comments and paste them into the comments on the new row. They would all be one large comment on the new row since which was fine for an archive.

A year ago after I discovered the only the last few comments were being copied/pasted. I had to start doing it another way to capture all the comments. Fortunately, Copy Row to Another Sheet does copy all the comments along with the row (if you check the copy comments checkbox) so I would copy it to to another sheet specifically set up for this purpose and then go to that sheet and copy it back to my main sheet, more time consuming but effective.

I rewrote my Smartsheet application over the last two years to take advantage of all the enhancements (cross sheet references, automated workflows, dashboards, charts, etc.) to Smartsheet over the years since the original app was created back in 2015 and make it easier to maintain. These days I use what I call "action reports" to trigger archiving of closing projects on multiple processing sheets to multiple archive sheets each week. Then I use what I call "data reports" to display a combination of active and closed project history that access data from both the active project processing sheets and archives.

I am not able to share data from my actual sheets with you since they are full of company confidential information but I will create a new sheet with dummy comments and attempt to understand what the limitation is and I can share that. I don't believe I ever get close to the 10,000 character limit on comments since the typical comment is less than 60 characters and might happen twice per month over the two year life of a project, less than 3000 characters total.

Jim Hook

Genevieve,

If you can send me some email address, I can share a simple sheet with you that shows the problem very clearly and let you try it yourself.

Jim

Genevieve P.

Hi @Jim Hook

My apologies for the delay! Thank you for explaining your process a little more. I've been able to test and replicate what you're seeing; when you select text to copy it, the copy to clipboard will only bring through what's visible in the Comments pane and not all of the comments (including ones you have to scroll up to see).

I believe this is due to a performance optimization we implemented for the panel about a year ago and at this time it's expected behaviour. If you could provide your feedback to the Product team so they could hear about your specific use-case that would be very helpful.

Since you potentially have a number of comments, instead of copying parts of the conversation at a time, you could export the Smartsheet file (for example, to excel). This would then house all the comments on a second tab where you can fully copy/paste from into your other sheet. See: Export to Microsoft Excel

I hope that helps!

Genevieve

Jim Hook

Hi Genevieve,

Thanks for your reply and verification of my issue. As I've been living with this issue for a year now I've worked around it by using Copy Row to another sheet with comments and then copying it back again. In the rewrite of my Smartsheet app I keep closed project archives in separate sheets and use automated workflows to copy all the rows associated with a closing project to the archives.

My only complaint is that I can't remember seeing any document saying that copy/paste became limited so for some period of time I was losing comments when archiving closing projects.

I have one other issue regarding comments that I have complained about using feedback to the project team several times. At the end of a project there can be as many as 30 individual conversations in the comments area in a row and they need to be individually deleted before the row can be used for a new project. I have asked for a way to delete all comments in a single operation as the system admin but apparently that is not going to happen. So I end up having to manually delete each comment, a time consuming and annoying process. There was a major change to the comments area in 2016, I believe. Before that I could delete everything at one time. I've looked at deleting the row to eliminate all the comments in a single operation but that is a problem if there are any links in the row since they would be destroyed also. Maybe I'm the only Smartsheet user that uses the Smartsheet programming environment this way since I haven't heard complaints from others.

Thanks again for your help.

Jim