Mitigating risk of breaking formulas or automations when deleting columns in a Sheet

Brandon Bunney

Hello,

My team has a number of grids that have been through several owners over the past year and contain many columns that appear to be meaningless as a result. We would like to remove unutilized columns, but we cannot seem to find a consolidated list of what might break or be affected if we delete a given column.

In Tableau & other similar programs, if a user attempts to delete a calculation or data field that is being used elsewhere in a dashboard or sheet, they will be met with an alert saying something like "Are you sure you want to delete this data field? It is being used in sheets X, Y and Z & formulas 1 and 2"

Is there a similar feature within Smartsheet application that could provide this info about formula or workflow dependencies for each column in a grid?

Thank you!

Jeff Reisman

@Brandon Bunney

Cells that are referenced in a formula in another sheet or cell-linked to another sheet are marked by a small black "out" arrow in the bottom right corner of the cell. Selecting the cell and hovering over this will show you where that formula or cell-link is.

As far as automation workflows, you just have to open each one up and check what column it list for triggers, conditions, or actions.

If there is conditional formatting on a column, that's the one thing Smartsheet demands you remove before it lets you delete a column!

If you delete a column containing a cell(s) linked out to other sheets, the link is broken but the linked data remains in the other sheet. The blue "in" triangle in the remote cell changes to red: