Formula results started flipping back and forth

Hello,

My team has been using the sheet I built for months, and on or around 9/12, some of the formulas have gone haywire. I have multiple components within a project, and once all components are complete, the project stage will flip to Complete. I use a JOIN(COLLECT) function in one column and a helper column that evaluates the trues/falses of the JOIN(COLLECT). The helper column looks for blanks or "false", and if either are true, it will populate with "not ready". If both are false, it will populate with "Complete".

Everything has been working perfectly until recently. I checked the cell history of a few anomalies, and the result for the helper column has been flipping from "not ready" to "Complete" over and over again. Looking at the activity log, it appears that the JOIN(COLLECT) column is failing to display the full result of the formula (intermittently). For example, if the project has 3 components, and two of the three are done, I would expect to see this: "true/true/false", which equates to a helper column of "not ready". Mysteriously, the same cell will flip to show "true/true/", which equates to a helper column of "Complete". It will cycle back and forth repeatedly. I've read that this behavior may have something to do with a Chrome extension or 3rd party app? Any insight you can provide would be helpful!

Thanks,

Christine

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Christine D.

Here is a screenshot of the "flippage" that I'm seeing. My falses disappeared from the cell, which trips the helper column evaluation.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Christine D.

I hope you're well and safe!

Try these troubleshooting steps first.

Log out / in again
Try a different browser
Try the browsers in Private/Incognito mode
If possible, check if other users have the same issue

If the steps above don't solve it, and if you haven't already, I recommend that you reach out to the Smartsheet Support Team and provide the results of the troubleshooting steps above.

Did that make any difference?

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support the Community by marking it Insightful/Vote Up, Awesome, or/and as the accepted answer. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

Christine D.

Hi Andree,

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm not sure I understand how changing the browser would help? The incorrect switches are all attributed to "Smartsheet Automation", and it gets corrected when someone goes into the sheet. I've noticed that there is no flipping on the weekends (we are not typically working on the weekends). Smartsheet Automation will incorrectly remove the falses on Friday, and when someone goes in Monday morning, the correction gets attributed to that person in the log. I did try going in with Edge, and I was able to trigger the same behavior with that browser as I did with Chrome, which I guess rules out a browser issue.

Regarding other users having the same problem, I'm not sure how to check this either, as we are all using the same workspace, so they are seeing the same cell history that I am.

It's very strange that this suddenly started happening on 9/12. The JOIN(COLLECT) formulas are the only ones doing this. Is there a different function I can use? I hate to go around the problem and not solve it, though.

Thanks!

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