Can't a System Admin recover a deleted sheet for someone?

I am one of the Smartsheet System Admins for our company. We have the Enterprise license of Smartsheet. I've had people ask me to recover sheets they accidently deleted that were shared to them by someone else (so they weren't the owner.) I can't find a way to recover the deleted sheet for them, I only see my sheets that I've deleted in the Deleted Items folder. Can a System Admin recover a deleted sheet for someone else?

We had to wait until the sheet owner returned to work after a day off to get the deleted sheet restored.

On a related note: can't the System Admin see all of the sheets and workspaces other users have created? I couldn't even see the workspace in the last incident of accidental deletion before the owner shared it to me. For instance, a system admin should be able to see items and workspaces and then share them with other users if the owner is on leave. All of the online documentation refers to the owner, editor or workspace admin sharing Smartsheet items but nothing explains how a System Admin who doesn't have those rights to do the same simple tasks. It seems pretty limiting to restrict these types of setup functions from a System Admin.

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Accepted answers

Jeff Reisman

@Matt Rasmussen

Smartsheet System Admins do not have access to every sheet or workspace (I know, it surprised me too when I first started working with Smartsheet.) We do have access to reports that can show us what sheets and workspaces exist, whom they are owned by, and who has access to them. The sheets and data inside them are not accessible unless the sheet or workspace is shared with the System Admin by the owner, admin, or editors with can-share permissions.

In the case of an accidental deletion, or someone's license gets pulled without transferring ownership, Support may be able to recover the sheets and change ownership, but I'm not 100% on this.

All comments

Jeff Reisman

@Matt Rasmussen

In the case of an accidental deletion, or someone's license gets pulled without transferring ownership, Support may be able to recover the sheets and change ownership, but I'm not 100% on this.

Matt Rasmussen

Thanks for your answer, @Jeff Reisman - This has been a minor inconvenience but it could be a real problem from a contingency planning perspective if an employee is unexpectedly out long term or leaves the company without notice; there is no way of changing access to important project plans. That's a major issue for functionality that should be available out of the box.

Jeff Reisman

@Matt Rasmussen if the user is active and their sheets/resources have not been deleted, a Smartsheet Sys Admin CAN transfer their owned sheets to someone else. The kicker is that they ALL have to transfer to the same person. Once that one person owns the other user's sheets, they can individually reassign ownership to other licensed users.

This is done via User Management in the Admin Center. Go to Manage Licensed Users, and Transfer Owned Items is a menu option for a user.

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