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Column Tooltips

Michael Lockwood
Michael Lockwood ✭✭✭
edited 12/09/19 in Archived 2016 Posts

I am looking for a way to have tooltips on column headers in a sheet.  The reason is say you have a large sheet that is being used for data collection.  Some of the fields people may not understand exacly what you are looking for, so having a way to put in a tip or description would be great.

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Comments

  • Heidi Decker
    Heidi Decker ✭✭✭✭✭✭
    edited 10/05/16

    Hi Michael,

    What we are doing is using the first couple of top rows in each column to discribe what it's function is. Much like if you pull up a template like the Smartsheet Formula Examples sheet, you will see they have the top row of each column explaining what it does. Maybe that will work for you.

    Peace.

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  • Mattisphere
    Mattisphere ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'd add to Heidi's approach to lock the rows once you have the tips entered. General best practice is to have rows at the top for summary data and descriptions.

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  • Michael Lockwood
    Michael Lockwood ✭✭✭
    edited 10/10/16

    I get the idea of locked rows with the descriptions but when those descriptions are a bit long it would make columns very wide and take up a few rows.  So I, with a colleague, came up with an alternate way of handling this situation.  We created a spreadsheet that has all the definitions in it and attached it to the sheet.  We then lock the first row and state in the primary column to review the attached Excel file for column definitions. 

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  • J. Craig Williams
    J. Craig Williams ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Michael,

     

    I do the same thing for many sheets I create but use a Smartsheet instead of Excel (or Google Sheets).

    What is the advantage of using an Excel file?

     

    If you keep the info in an external file, you can attach it directly to the sheet, you lose the visual cue that the attachment is there, but that can be handled with a bit of training.

     

    Craig

     

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  • smartineer
    smartineer ✭

    Hi there,

    having tooltips or a similar function would be very handy.

    I do not like to mess around with work-arounds. They are often complex and some people are failing applying them.

    Hope smartsheet will implement this function.

     

    BR Gerald

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  • Audi Gaudi
    Audi Gaudi ✭

    Hi,

    Is there any improvment for this situation ? 

    We are exactly looking for the same options described by Michael few years ago...

    Thx

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  • JamesR
    JamesR ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    It,s done

     

    See my post

    https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/column-descriptions-here-last

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