Is there a solution or workaround for importing excel sheets every time content changes?

Cameron Ostafin

Hello,

Currently our client submits an excel sheet with every project/request and we then create our own shared excel sheet by copying all the same content from the clients excel sheet and pasting it on to our own internal one. We add in a couple new/different columns and change the order around very slightly but all the information is basically the same for the most part.

The issue is that very often, the client will sometimes cancel some of the deliverables that were originally listed on the excel sheet submission or they will often add in additional deliverables but often they never let us know of these changes.

Having to constantly and manually update our internal excel sheets is very time consuming and also sometimes leaves room for error when copying and pasting. I am wondering if there is a solution within Smartsheet.

Any help or guidance is appreciated. Thanks!

Paul Newcome

You could create a sheet in Smartsheet that has all of the columns listed and have them fill that in. Sharing permissions means that you would have access to the same data set as opposed to having to hope yours matches theirs.

Cameron Ostafin

I wish that could be the solve, but this client is very difficult and wouldn't be willing to operate in another tool than their own where we get the excel sheet from them. It's annoying but I'm hoping there's something we can do internally to make this process easier.

It relies on me and other PMs I work with to check the clients excel sheet for updates which is annoying but something we've just come to terms with that it's something we have to do. The main issue I am trying to solve is an easier way to update our sheet with those updates each different time. Whether it's just twice or 5 times we need to update our internal sheet, I'm hoping there's an easy or templated way we can do this.

Paul Newcome

If you have access to the premium add-on Data Shuttle you can set up an automatic workflow where all you have to do is attach the client's version to the sheet, and Data Shuttle will update all of the rows (assuming there is a unique identifier for each row).