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Smartsheet Add Contacts

Smartsheet contact columns require that people be in your Smartsheet contacts list before they can be assigned. Adding contacts to a sheet one by one — especially when setting up a new project with many assignees — means typing or searching for each person individually, and contacts outside your organisation may not appear in autocomplete at all.

Without Grid Tools

The daily workaround

Type names one cell at a time
Users click each contact cell and begin typing the assignee's name, waiting for the autocomplete dropdown to surface the right person before selecting them.
Fail to find external contacts
People outside the user's Smartsheet organisation often do not appear in autocomplete, requiring the user to type a full email address manually in each cell.
Re-enter contacts on new sheets
When a project moves to a new sheet, all contact assignments must be re-entered manually because there is no way to bulk-load a known contact list.
Paste and reformat from a roster
Teams copy a list of names from a spreadsheet or email, then manually match each one to the correct Smartsheet contact record because pasting raw text does not create contact-column values.
Screenshot: Typing in a contact cell and waiting for autocomplete
Typing each assignee name individually in a contact cell
Screenshot: Autocomplete showing no match for an external email
No autocomplete match for a person outside the organisation
Screenshot: Manually typing a full email address into a contact cell
Typing a full email manually when autocomplete fails

With Grid Tools

How Grid Tools handles it

Load contacts from a list
Paste or import a set of names and email addresses and Grid Tools populates the corresponding contact column cells.
Add contacts not in autocomplete
Enter an email address directly to assign a person even if they are not in your Smartsheet contacts directory.
Bulk-assign multiple contacts at once
Set the same contact across a range of rows in one action rather than clicking and typing in each cell.
Works inside the sheet — no separate import
Contact loading happens from the Grid Tools toolbar while you are working in the sheet, without navigating to account settings or a separate import flow.
Screenshot: Grid Tools add contacts panel in toolbar
Add Contacts panel open in the Grid Tools toolbar
Screenshot: Entering email addresses to load as contacts
Loading contacts by entering names or email addresses
Screenshot: Contact column cells populated with assignees
Contact column populated after bulk contact load

Frequently asked questions

Does Smartsheet have a built-in way to bulk-add contacts to a column?

No. Smartsheet only supports adding contacts to a column by typing or selecting them one cell at a time. Grid Tools adds a bulk-load workflow for populating contact columns from a list.

Can I add contacts who are not in my Smartsheet organisation?

Yes. Grid Tools lets you enter any valid email address directly, so external collaborators and guests can be assigned even when they do not appear in Smartsheet autocomplete.

Does this work with multi-contact columns (columns that allow more than one contact per cell)?

Yes. Grid Tools supports Smartsheet's multi-contact column type, so you can load multiple assignees into a single cell where the column settings permit it.

Will loaded contacts receive Smartsheet notifications or sharing invitations automatically?

No. Adding a contact to a cell does not automatically share the sheet or trigger notifications. Sharing and notification settings are managed separately in Smartsheet.

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