Sign in to submit new ideas and vote
Get Started

Line Shading - every other row

Cindy Zobrist
Cindy Zobrist ✭✭
edited 11/16/22 in Smartsheet Product Feedback & Ideas

Shade every other line on a sheet to identify easier which line you are working on, especially when your sheets are wide. 😉

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
45
Up
45 votes

On Radar · Last Updated

While this change is not part of our current plan, we appreciate you sharing this idea. We hope that some of the alternatives proposed in this post help you in the short term. Please keep commenting on this and other ideation posts that interest you – your feedback plays a big role in shaping our decisions for the future.

Comments

  • Genevieve P.
    Genevieve P. Employee Admin
    edited 10/20/22

    Hi @Cindy Zobrist

    Thanks for posting your idea!

    If you want to set this up today, I currently use two helper columns to do something similar on my sheets.

    • 1st step: add in an auto-number system column. I called mine "Row".
    • 2nd step: add in a text/number column with a formula to return a 1 or 0 for every other row.

    =IF(ISEVEN(VALUE(MATCH(Row@row, Row:Row, 0))), 1, 0)

    Screenshot 2022-10-20 at 14.13.33.png

    3rd step: set up Conditional Formatting based on that helper column

    Screenshot 2022-10-20 at 14.12.00.png

    Cheers,

    Genevieve

    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Cindy Zobrist
    Cindy Zobrist ✭✭

    @Genevieve P. Thank you - thank you - thank you!!!!! You are amazing! Thanks so much for your quick response and resolution! 😊

    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Genevieve P.
    Genevieve P. Employee Admin

    No problem! Glad I could help. 🙂

    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Marc Shecter
    Marc Shecter ✭✭✭✭✭

    Enable sheet admin or owners to apply alternating row colors.

    Requirements:

    1. With a minimum of clicks (Google Sheets does it in two).
    2. Enable a selection of styles
    3. Colors continue to alternate after sorting or filtering, adding or removing rows.
    4. Choose to include header and footer in the styles
    5. Enable the creation of custom styles

    See Google Sheets for the example I'm used to.

    Alternating row colors makes grids of data easier to read. In Smartsheet formulaic solutions with helper columns are the only options available. And these options are not easy for novices to implement are complex to setup, and do not hold up to sorting or filtering.

    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Cindy Zobrist
    Cindy Zobrist ✭✭

    Thanks for your time and help! :)

    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Kylie
    Kylie ✭✭

    Color banding every other row in a sheet helps tremendously with readability and accessibility. While it's possible to use helper columns to apply this type of color banding to an entire sheet, the banded formatting loses its functionality when filters are engaged or rows are re-sorted. It would be great to have the option to apply dynamic row banding to Smartsheet grids, similar to those in Excel, where the color banding maintains an every-other-row format even when grid hierarchy changes via filters, addition of new rows, application of different sorting rules, etc.

    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Rick Olsen
    Rick Olsen ✭✭✭✭

    One way to possibly do this on Smartsheet's side is to surface the dynamic row number, like we do with the Latest Comment. Then no matter if you delete a line, sort, etc., that column would be available. Then we could use the method Genevieve described above using the odd/even Conditional Formatting with it breaking.

    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Categories