Slow sheets corrupting data in Pivot, summary sheets, etc.

Emma Stanford

We have some big sheets with a lot of complicated cross-sheet formulas and cell links. We use reports, pivots, and dashboards to collate and summarize data. Recently, we've had a few incidents where a sheet loading slowly (apparently) causes things to malfunction. A dashboard metric will appear as "#CIRCULAR REFERENCE", or a pivot output wil be full of "#INVALID REF", or a report will appear empty because suddenly none of the source sheets' rows match the criteria. From what I've heard from Smartsheet support so far, it seems like this is what's happening:

• Formulas and cell links take a long time to load
• While they are loading, the cells are populated with error messages
• Those error messages are interpreted as actual data by Pivot, report filtering, and other sheets’ cross-sheet formulas

The error messages are interpreted as actual cell edits in the activity log too:

This seems like a huge problem! I don't mind if a sheet is slow to load from the UX perspective, but if the slowness is corrupting our data, even temporarily, that's a real problem. Has anyone else experienced this? Does Smartsheet have a plan to address it?

Andrée Starå

Hi @Emma Stanford

I hope you're well and safe!

If you haven't already, I recommend reaching out to the Smartsheet Support Team.

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Emma Stanford

Hi @Andrée Starå, I did reach out before I posted here. The advice I got was to reduce the number of cell links so that the sheets would load faster, which isn't a solution to the underlying problem.

Andrée Starå

@Emma Stanford

Ok. I think the best way would be to submit it as Product Feedback.

Please submit this as a Product Feedback or Idea (If it hasn't been added already) when you have a moment.

✅Remember! 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!

Emma Stanford

For others' benefit, I've been advised that this issue is related to the bug described in this update: https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/96114/update-on-formula-errors-with-range-references