Latency and Speed

James,

While I tend to agree that good design can reduce the problems, we (the users) typically don't have the tools to adequately test and prepare said sheets except through trial-and-error.

I typically run into problems far before the limits of row, columns, or cells.

The first symptom? A deletion of a row results in the inability to save the sheet.

Thanks. NOW WHAT?

Today, I had added a few columns to a sheet, not realizing I was close the (hard) limits.

I could not delete a check box column. At all.

But I could delete a text/number column and then the check box column and then add the text/number column back in. That was 20 minutes to figure out.

Simple things like showing how many columns are in use (process now: export as Excel, transpose the header, and look at the row number), how many cells are in use,

how many rows are in use (instead of scrolling down).

If I add column, tell me "this is your 183rd column, beware".

More difficult things like timing that can be accessed by the user.

It took 37 seconds to open the Find dialog today. I used a stop watch.

(Of course, turn that off normally because just timing it will make is slower. The Observer Effect results in the system being slower because we want to time it)

When working with large sheets, I tend to multi-task because of speed issues, which results in further decreased productivity but at least I feel like I'm doing something useful.

Craig

Craig,

Yes I am with you all the way,  A big one I am comming accross at the moment is Calculations getting un alinged and therefore addressing the wrong cells.

I have found two occassions on larger sheets when this is a risk:

1 - It take more than one go to save it

2 - When you Move to anther sheet.  This is particullaly high risk if you filter to identify the rows you want to move and then move them with the filter still applied.

This last one caused me to have to re copy all Calculations down in every calculated column of a sheet, cost me 2 hours of my time identifying the issue, un hiding all columns and the individually coppying the formulae down.  Re hiding all the rows.

I would like to provide some further empirical feedback on the sheet limitations given by SmartSheet.

We have one or more sheets for each of our 50 or so projects. Every such sheet is always 56 columns wide. Every such sheet has identical layout, format and sets of formulas. Just one of those forumulas is close to the hard limit of 4,000 characters (information provided by SmartSheet Support), whereas the other formulas have around 300 characters.

Given the above, we start hitting the "Can't connect to the Internet" error (and therefore can't save any modifications to a sheet) when we get over about 600 rows, which is only 10% or so of the maximum number of rows.

Consequently, we now split project plans over a number of sheets in a project in order to have any chance of reliable performance. Unfortunately, the breakups are sometimes not sensible or logical fragmentations of the overall plan.

This puts us "between a rock and a hard place".

I concur with all of the comments above on operational difficulties, as we experience them too. It appears to me that the point at which SmartSheet breaks is a more complex function of columns, rows, conditional formats and, from my perspective, number, size and complexity of formulas. I would hope that the SmartSheet developers can work out an algorithm for this and give us that much needed advice, "You are approaching the Danger Zone, back away, back away..." in a timely manner.

Rob.

I have a new sheet that appears to be hitting the limits.

Cell count is about 65% of the limit, but there are some complicated formulas.

I need some warning before the whole system just stops working.

Craig