Cell Linking/Formulas in Reports

This has been one of my pet peeves from the beginning. Reports are like fancy aggregated data from a sheet or multiple sheets. It's two-way only in that editing something that is gathered in a report goes back to the main sheet. However, you can't edit any field that has a formula. Which is a pain. You have to go back to the main sheet to edit the field. It makes sense in some measures to lock this data, but as an admin user, or if someone is given a particular role in a report, they should be able to overwrite formulas with hard data - or updated formulas if the need be. 

i could understand that pain. I wouldn't want my report users updating formulas either, however, in some cases I have wanted people to hard code a date rather than use the formulated date to adjust a timeline - but there is no way for someone in a report to do that. I hated even more, sending them to the "official" data collecting sheet and making changes there. 

I understand your point and reasoning. But we are working with a series of formulas and I think if you allow only certain roles to override a formula I think it would be okay. Like if you assigned someone with an admin role. We are working with massive data collection sheet would have dates that were formulated across rows and needed to have users be able to enter a solid date to recalculate date formulas based on that date in the cell, but it was impossible because the date was initially set by a formula.

I think in rare cases, with the right privileges, it might make sense. Adding another column to that sheet would have driven everyone mad.  

I too am having similar issues with reports as Stephen and Mike are, for various reasons using a cell reference to make easier for default values (another SS workaround) that may or may not need overwirting.  Strangely enough for example the cell reference is overwriteable from a desktop but not on mobile?

If an admin action is allowed at the sheet level then should not the same permission level be allowed at the report level?  Having some of the standard SS tools to improve information on a consolidated report would be beneficial.  

Perhaps there can be a "Sheet" Builder/Consolidator similar to Report Builder for Admins vs Rolling up WS through linking.  If there were even a few rows on top of the report so can do some summarization would improve of report information.

Charts is a good example, which luckily found there is a lab for :

https://smartsheetlabs.com/

Even so had to manipulate the entire report to get a simple chart and is not possible to add to a dashboard, all details which unfortunately SS falls short.  

Row/Column) locking and permissions should be the tool to prevent formulas from being overwritten or better Cell locking.  Publishing report access could be another way to protect formulas but anything prior should be controllable by an admin/owner, again since have same control at sheet level and avoids unnecessary clicks opening and closing for simple corrections and changes.  

At this point am using SS to really only perform workflow steps (working well but with a lot of development effort) but now am looking at exporting the reports to Excel then automating import into a DB if necessary as found the SS limits, convoluted permissions and restrictions becoming a frustration challenge.

Craig appreciate your many posts as have helped immensely identify SS weaknesses but as well noticing just how many community enhancement requests are, hours with support, and time spend on workarounds which in my opinion indicates SS still has a way to go. 

Hopefully will see SS get these enhancements working in some release soon so not to have to spend so much time on workarounds.

Regards,

-Keith