Adding child row when columns have formulas

JessZwei

I have a sheet that pulls information from another sheet with Index/Match on several columns, including the primary column. I would like to be able to add child row, but when I add a row, it will not allow me to indent in to make it a child row. I believe it is because of the column formula. Any ideas of a way around this? How can I add a child row here?

Paul Newcome

You will not be able to enter text into a cell being populated with a column formula. Until those rows have some kind of entry in them, they will be counted as "empty" as opposed to "blank" which means column formulas will not pull in and formatting cannot be done. You will need to find a column that does not contain a column formula and enter some kind of text there.

Paul Newcome

You should be able to indent regardless of formulas. I do this almost every day when building metrics sheets.

Are you able to provide a screenshot for reference and point out exactly which row you are wanting to indent?

JessZwei

Thank you for your reply! Here is a screenshot. Data was pulled from Index/Match into this sheet for these columns. I then inserted rows 2 and 3, and would like those to be indented child rows. But I'm unable to do anything at all with these cells. I can't even type text into them, much less make an indent.

Paul Newcome

You will not be able to enter text into a cell being populated with a column formula. Until those rows have some kind of entry in them, they will be counted as "empty" as opposed to "blank" which means column formulas will not pull in and formatting cannot be done. You will need to find a column that does not contain a column formula and enter some kind of text there.

JessZwei

Thanks for the input. I was thinking this was the case, but was hoping someone knew a workaround. I think I will end up adding new columns as you suggest, and go from there.

Paul Newcome

Happy to help. 👍️

Whenever I create a sheet that has mostly formulas, I generally add a text/number column somewhere and make sure to put some random text in every row. Even something as simple as a period or the number 1 will work.