How to show Contact Names instead of email addresses in Contact Column in Sheet?

moraki

Hello all.

I am using Contact Columns in my Sheet, where we add Contacts. There are two ways to add a row: either by submitting a form, either by inserting a row inside the Sheet. The problem is that often only the person's email is visible while we want to show the person's name.

From my research I found that you have to add this person as a contact in order for their name to appear in the Contact Column. However, I have already tried this and one email still doesn't have a name attached. I have added the name multiple times by double clicking the email field and editing the contact but that doesn't seem to do anything.

Is there some other thing I haven't found and is the key to make this work?

Thank you.

Hamza1

Hi@moraki

To show the name of the user you’ll want to add the user as a contact by following the steps below:

1. 在导航栏中,选择账户我Smartsh >eet Contacts.
2. To display the Contact form, in the My Smartsheet Contacts form, select Add.
3. Type the name and email address of the contact, and select OK.

这些步骤之后,内容新康泰克补充道t(s) to your contact list. Following this you can then start to type the name of the user in the cell of the Contact List column which should display the name of the user. Please see the following screenshots for reference:

For more information on managing contacts please see the help articlehttps://help.smartsheet.com/articles/796143-managing-contacts

In the event that you’r still experiencing an issue, please kindly provide screenshots of the behaviour you’re seeing and cover any sensitive information.

Thanks,

Hamza

moraki

Dear Hamza,

Thank you for your reply and the information you provided.

As I see in your screenshot (the second one), when you start typing the email address, the name of the contact is not showing on the dropdown option below, only the email address. This is the problem I am trying to solve.

I am attaching the same screenshots from my account but you can see that it is the same scenario as the one you described. I have added a user as a contact and yet, when I type their email, their name doesn't load/appear on the field. However for another user it works and shows their name. So I cannot understand the logic behind this.

Do you have any other ideas on how I could solve this issue?

Hamza1

Hi@moraki

Pleas kindly note that if a contact has already been selected in the column with the email, and then you add the contact with the Contact Name, the email will still be an option because it appears in the column already. In the screenshot provided, once I start typing the name of the user, the email address also appears but when I click on it this will display the name of the user on that particular cell. Please see the screenshots below:

When you type a name or email address in a Contact List column, the names that are displayed will include the following:

• Any preferred contact values that you’ve set up in the Column Properties window.
• All collaborators shared to the sheet.
• Any other contacts or email addresses that have been assigned to other rows in the sheet.
• People in your personal Smartsheet contacts list. (More information on this is availablehere.)
• If you're a part of a Business or Enterprise account, other people that are in the account. (More information onUser Managementis available here.)

For more information on the above please seethis help center article.

KMarti

I have a similar question. I'm setting up a sheet where I want end users to enter their email address in the form, but once the form is submitted and the row is added to the sheet, I want it to appear on the sheet as the contact name instead of the email address. I have the users added to my contacts list. How can I accomplish this?

Genevieve P.

Hey@KMarti

What I would personally do here is have a "reference sheet" that has two columns: a Contact list column with all the users listed as Contacts, and a Text/Number column with their associated email address.

Then you can adjust theForm's security settingsso that the user has to log into Smartsheet to fill out the form, which then allows the form to automatically capture the email address (so they don't have to manually add it in) in theCreated By system columnin your sheet.

Once you have the email, you can use anIndex(Match formulato look into your reference sheet and bring back the associated Contact.

If you only have a small number of users in the form, you could use anAssign People workflowinstead, with the condition block checking the email address before assigning the contact.

Cheers,

Genevieve