Cannot sort rows.

Hey there,

found similar questions, but none with an actual answer, so hoping someone could help.

People cannot sort rows in a sheet, as the options is greyed out. Users in question have "Editor - can share" access, no filters are applied, and the column I'm trying to sort is not locked. Any thoughts on what's happening?

Thank you.

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Summer

Hi @MarianaMA

I had the same thing happen to my users. The culprit was an active filter. If the sheet has a filter on it the sort option will be greyed out.

ooo, just re-read your comment that said no filters are applied and the rows aren't locked. That really is a head scratcher. Smartsheet has been glitching out lately in the most random ways. Perhaps this is one?

Kindly,

Summer

Genevieve P.

Hi @MarianaMA

Even though the column is not locked, is it possible you have certain rows that are locked?

See: Sort Rows to Organize Your Data

Although Editors can sort a sheet, they can't sort locked rows. If the Sort Rows option appears unavailable, and you're shared to the sheet with Editor permissions, deselect any locked rows before attempting to sort.

Can you also confirm that this is a Sheet type of Smartsheet item and not a Report? If it's a sheet, without locked columns or rows, or a filter applied, it would be helpful to see a screen capture of what they're seeing (but please block out sensitive data).

Thanks,

Genevieve

rfj0001

I had a similar issue where a sheet was shared to multiple users. It was a Sheet type of Smartsheet item. We detected no row-locking in place. One of them had Editor-can share permissions and could not sort (the option was grayed-out), the other had Admin permissions and could sort rows. Changing the permissions from Editor - can share to Admin solved the problem.

Dman

Solved: it was parent / child relationships had been set (many inadvertantly, and 4 generations deep(!) and that was what was screwing up the sorting. Leaving my original post below from an hour ago:

I have a sorting issue as well. I have an archive sheet that is a duplicate of an open issues list, a simple automation moves rows to the archive sheet when the status for that row is marked "complete". There is a mastersort column for both sheets, and since the automation of moving a row to the archive sheet just places the row at the bottom of the archive sheet, I occasionally manually sort the archive sheet my the master sort column… but it isn't working.

There is a user discipline for inserting a row in the active sheet that maybe isn't being followed very well (the master sort field is numbered by increments of 5) and that is when inserting a new row to be sure and number the master sort field accordingly, this should keep issues grouped logically (some users use a decimal, some use an integer between the 5 increment) so in theory both the active issues list and the archive issues list can be sorted and matters of same groupings will align when sorted. Since that discipline isn't followed very well the archive sheet has rows with duplicate mastersort values…but they aren't next to each other because the sorting isn't working right.

Nothing is locked, all filters are off when sorting, alot of people had admin rights to the archive sheet, so I've reigned that in a bit to many just having 'editor can share' rights. Maybe this is a clue: It isn't just the duplicate 'mastersort' valued rows that are not sorting correctly… it seems pretty random.

When running a sort on the mastersort column in the archive sheet, there are no errors or messages, it just grinds a way for couple seconds and acts like it is done and did a good job and such.

I changed the sort from ascending to descending and back again and it may of fixed a few… but not all…

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