Smartsheet: Identifying location of a Column ID without a Sheet ID

Question

We have a custom implementation of the SmartSheet Bridge which is returning the following error in our Run Log:

"The value for cell in column 3928364019935108, INPUT, did not conform to the strict requirements for type CHECKBOX."

The problem is we don't know which sheet this is occurring in which is making it hard to understand what the root cause of the problem is. Is there a way to identify the location of a column without a Sheet ID? Note we have six-thousand Sheets and it's not practical to do this manually.

Answer 1

The path of least resistance for you might be to contact Smartsheet support to explain your scenario and ask for their help in identifying the sheet.

If Smartsheet support is unable to assist, then you could write a script that'd programmatically iterate through all of the sheets that the specified account has access to doing the following for each sheet:

• Issue a Get Column request the current sheet.
• If the request succeeds, you've found the sheet that contains the specified column --> capture/output sheet ID and sheet name and exit the loop (end processing).
• If the request fails (i.e., returns a 404 error code to indicate column not found), move on to the next sheet.

Note that if you're program needs to issue hundreds or thousands of Get Column requests before it finds the sheet and ends processing -- you'll need to insert pauses between batches of requests so that you don't get a rate limiting error (error code 429). The Smartsheet API docs contain info about rate limiting.

If you need help with the script, update your question with a language tag to indicate what language you're going to be using, and add a comment here on my answer. Depending on the language you're using, I may be able to provide more help regarding the specifics of the script.