Cross Sheet References in Blueprint Template

Kelly Pratt

I am in the process of setting up a project blueprint. In my template folder I have a summary sheet of data that has ~10 cross sheet references to 2 other data sheets. Obviously to set those up, I added data to the sheet originally but then removed it so the sheet is clean when a project is created through the blueprint.

In QA, when we create the project, all the cross sheet references are removed and my formulas throw errors. Is this typical?

My workaround is to add data into one cell in the data sheets to add a row, but it won't impact my summary being incorrect but I just want to make sure this is what I have to do and there's not another way?

Thank you in advance!

Paul Newcome

Yes. You need to have a placeholder row in your blueprint. I typically just put "PLACEHOLDER" in every cell. If someone deletes it after it has been provisioned, the cross sheet references will still hold, so it really shouldn't hurt anything. You may need to adjust formulas and report filters to exclude "PLACEHOLDER" sometimes, but really that should be relatively straightforward.

Paul Newcome

Yes. You need to have a placeholder row in your blueprint. I typically just put "PLACEHOLDER" in every cell. If someone deletes it after it has been provisioned, the cross sheet references will still hold, so it really shouldn't hurt anything. You may need to adjust formulas and report filters to exclude "PLACEHOLDER" sometimes, but really that should be relatively straightforward.

Kelly Pratt

Thanks, @Paul Newcome ! That's what I thought but wanted to double check if that was the only way. Cheers!

Paul Newcome

Happy to help. 👍️