Sharing

You can collaborate with users inside or outside your organization by sharing sheets and reports. People can also request access to items. The users can be inside or outside your organization and don’t need to have Smartsheet accounts.

User permissions determine the actions users can perform on the shared items. 

Share a sheet or report

1. Start the sharing process by selecting one of the following options:
   • File > Menu

   • Share in the upper-right area of the screen

     If the sheet or report is in a workspace, the Share button is a dropdown that provides options to share the item specifically or to share everything in the workspace. 

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2. In the Add people by name, email or group field, type a user’s or group’s email address. 

If you’re part of the Enterprise plan, your share modal shows recommendations of individuals and groups you commonly collaborate with. Select their name with one click to see them added to the contact picker. 

3. Use the dropdown to select the permission level you want to assign to each person or group.
4. In the Message (optional) field, create a personal message to communicate with your collaborators.
5. Use the Notify people and Cc myself checkboxes to notify collaborators and decide whether you want to see a copy of the message sent to your inbox.

For sheets, use the Edit option next to Default View to define a default view for when collaborators open the sheet you’re sharing.

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Use the Copy link option to directly share the item or embed it somewhere else. Only people with a Smartsheet account and shared to the item can use the link. 

6. Select Share.

You can stop sharing or change permission levels at the item and workspace levels.

Consider the following:

When you go to share a sheet or report, the Share window specifies that Recipients without a Member seat may be limited to View-only access.

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Manage access window

Search and sort collaborators

In the Manage access window, use the search and sort options to easily find the person or group you’re looking for to either modify or remove their permissions.

When using the search functionality, you can search for individuals and groups, but you can’t search for individuals within groups.

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Review collaborators’ seat types

Ensure that collaborators you’re sharing your sheet or report with have the right seat type to receive the permissions you’re trying to assign.

If you have Admin or Editor - can share permissions, open the Share window, go to Manage access, and hover over a name to view that person’s seat type.

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Who can control users’ sharing access?

• Plan Asset Admins can review access requests and grant permissions to items they can access. 
• In Admin Center, System Admins can prevent a user from sharing items owned by users on the account. 

• Group Admins can remove a member from a group to remove that user’s access to items shared to that group.

  To access an item such as a sheet or report, see Request access to an item.

Share items through a contact column

As an Editor for an item, you can use a contact column to share people to your sheet if they’re not shared yet.

• When you add unshared contacts to a contact column, the system will prompt you to quickly share that contact with the specific item.
• If you decide to share that contact to your item, they get a permission level of Editor-can share by default.
• If you add contacts to the column without dismissing the prompt, you can bulk-share your item. 

Sharing items through a contact column is only available when using table view. Learn more about table view.

Things to keep in mind

• Sharing a report doesn’t grant access to its source sheets.
• When you share a report, collaborators see only the data from the source sheets they can access. The reports may appear blank or may be missing information without access to the source sheets. 

When you share a report, make sure to share its source sheets. If you don’t want to share the source sheets, consider publishing the report and sharing its link.

Tips on sharing Smartsheet items

• Follow the sharing steps in this article if you want to share individual items with a few people. 
• If you want to share items with a group (such as your coworkers), share them via a workspace.
• To share a dashboard, check out the Share a Dashboard article. 
• If you want to share a report with somebody who doesn’t have access to source sheets, consider these options:
  • Publish the report and share the link
  • Insert the report as a widget in a dashboard