Allow formulas to function in reports

Currently formulas do not update while in a report. If a value changes, you must refresh the report or window to see the updated formula. This creates a lot of confusion since we use reports to gather updates, which results in me being told "your smartsheet is broken" because the formula columns do not update.

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Jake Gustafson

Agreed. The 'live' conditional formatting and formula calculation that a sheet provides is great, to have that in Reports would be outstanding. It's a constant training item to explain to 1) fill in the data, then 2) hit the refresh button, 3) hit save on the prompt from the refresh button, then 4) see your updated results (which might take you to a view of a different portion of the screen than you were previously on.

Paul Foote

We have the same issue, it is very disappointing for us as we have developed a “Legislation Compliance” tracking system that can’t be relied upond. Each morning a report is run to see if any compliance items are due for that day and report those that are overdue. The overdue formula as you known won’t activate unless someone opens the sheet.

After logging a ticket with Smart sheet, their suggestion was to “vote” our support for a “feature” and suggested your item. The problem is if you look through the requests (features), this issue has been around for a long time (at least 2018). We needed a solution now or look at using something else, so we decided through the inaction of Smartsheet to look at a work around, which is working for us.

Hope the following info my help you (and others)

Background for understanding.

Our Council has approx. 84 compliance items that need to be reported on throughout the year. These items spread across 5 directorates and 24 units. For each compliance item, the system checks to see if the [Due Date] = Today(). If that is the case another check is to see if a unit has advised if the compliance report has been submitted [Completed Date] <> NULL.

So if [Due Date] is Today() and [Completed Date] = NULL include this item in the daily overdue report.

To make the sheet formula calculate the result without having someone open all of our sheet we added a help column [Force Refresh] to each sheet. Then created a workflow that runs every morning (6am) that checks for [Due Date] = Today(). If this condition is true the workflow writes text (Change cell value) into the [Force Refresh] cell. For us this makes the sheet formula to update the sheet and therefore the item appears on out overdue report.

If I have been unclear or you need more infor: paul.foote@centralcoast.nsw.gov.au

Schalk van der Merwe

i think it would be great to have the option to add formula in the report view, similar to the sheet view. even if it is basic maths like adding two values together.

Daniel_Gottlieb

I think the formulas should be updated live in reports just like in sheets. I get a lot of the same comments from users who provide updates in reports. We try to guide the users to update information in the reports but they often refuse to do this issue. They find having to entering numbers and refreshing the report each time (often takes a few refreshes) to see the updated formula cumbersome and time consuming. This becomes extremely time consuming when you have to update many rows at a time and the only way to do accurately is to go row by row.

Trang Turtletraxx

I have noticed even refreshing the report page does not update the formula calculation cells. My formulas are NOT date or TODAY() related. They are basic formulas like SUM or AVG. I have to open the source sheet, refresh that sheet, in order for the report values to update. Does anyone else have this same issue?

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