How to write an 'if' formula so a tickbox is selected if there are any children tasks?

Lisa McGonigle

I really am struggling with formulae (user issue, not Smartsheet). What formula do I write if I want a tick box selected to indicate if something is a parent task?

(The reason I want to do this is for some conditional formatting).

SolutionSal

Have you tried using a helper column with =COUNT(ANCESTORS()) as a column formula. It will return 0 if a row is a top level parent, 1 if it's a child, 2 if it's a child of a child and so on. I frequently use this trick for easy conditional formatting.

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/ancestors

SolutionSal

Have you tried using a helper column with =COUNT(ANCESTORS()) as a column formula. It will return 0 if a row is a top level parent, 1 if it's a child, 2 if it's a child of a child and so on. I frequently use this trick for easy conditional formatting.

https://help.smartsheet.com/function/ancestors