Wrap Text within column

I need to clarify. My original request was for viewing. I subsequently found the “Fit to width” under print, which helps when printing, but not viewing. Just trying to be clear.

While it could be interesting in some cases, I’d prefer it to be optional.

Yep. I can see where this might always not be 'allowable"

One workaround that might help you for the time being is to select the cell you’re interested in, then press Shift+Spacebar to open an expanded cell dialog. Then you can use arrow up/down keys to switch which row is selected and see all the text in the cell for that row.

The lack of wrapping text is an intentional design decision: to allow wrapping text, we would need to support variable row heights. Our rows are a consistent height in order to avoid the bloated mega-rows that you often find in spreadsheets. Generally, we believe that that table/grid view should be a good overview of a number of different records, whereas the expanded record view gives you the details.

Based on the amount of user feedback on this point, we may offer the ability to change the row height at some point. Alternatively, we might look into a non-grid view that shows each record as a card rather than a row, and this “card view” might support multiline text in a way that would enable you to fit more text information on a single card without having to expand it.

Out of curiosity, how would wrapping text fit into your personal workflow? Do you like to scroll down the table row by row in order to view the content? How many lines of text do you need to be visible—just a couple of lines, whole paragraphs, or multiple paragraphs? Do you need to scan through/read multiple cells at a time, or do you just need to quickly find an appropriate cell of interest and read it, without going to the trouble of expanding it?

Katherine. Honestly, I think its a matter of our users being so used to XCEL. We are a community theater with one full time employee and 3 part time. Much of the work of running the theater depends on volunteers. Years ago, one volunteer was an astute spreadsheet user. We run the theater almost entirely using spreadsheets they built… Lots of them. So, our staff and volunteers are familiar with how they work. Any change is not insurmountable, but would require training and familiarization of the new way. These are often obstacles to adopting new/different technologies. I suspect you’ve heard this before. It is perhaps a minor matter, but with scroll wheels making scrolling up and down on a spreadsheet to read a wrapped column, it seems like more clicks to scroll to the enlarge button and have to click it to then see the full text. Again, a matter of what you have been using a long time.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I like the design decision to keep things clean by not wrapping text, but I believe that power should be in the hands of the users to decide if they want to wrap text and have variable height rows or not. If it was a feature that could be switched on or off by each user per table (and not affect other users’ view of that table), that would be ideal. I have certain tables where I and others on my team at work would prefer to see more information at a glance, rather than having to expand each record/cell to get at the details.

I would like the column headings to be allowed to wrap - that would be helpful for explanations of what we’re seeing while not necessarily needing to see the full width of the colun

Kelly, you may find adding field descriptions useful—it’ll allow you to add mouseover descriptions to columns so you don’t have to expand the column width.

I like @Kelly_pratt suggestion. Example – I have a buch of date fields that don’t need to be wider than the date itself, but it’s harder to identify the column because the title is truncated.

In my case in it wouldn’t be so much for an explanation but for ID. I’m sorry I can’t :heart: your suggestion @Katherine_Duh because a) it requires hover so no good for overview, b) it obscures the next column (again not good for overview), c) it takes a bit to show even on hover so no good for quick ID.

If the column headers could wrap to a second row it could help reduce the width of columns without adding excessively intrusive vertical space. Would be happy if there was such an option vs wrap/nonwrap as standard behavior. Or if we could choose to reduce the heading size? [meant heading font size]

ditto to everything you said.

This, I think a limit on the number of wraps would likely solve the headache for most people while still keeping the design looking good.

Plus one for the option to allow column headings to be able to wrap or truncate. All of the reasons that are listed above, but mostly for the ability to have two word column names for single digit fields without wasting 30-40% of the screen real estate. I’ve got a 27" Apple Cinema Display and I can fit 14 columns, but most of my tables are >20. I’d be able to fit a lot of my tables on screen at once without having to hide columns if the column headers wrapped.

I totally concur with Aaron on this. We are very impressed with the Airtable functionality but the waste of “screen real estate” caused by non-wrapping column headers is annoying. Thank you for fixing this ASAP.

Agreed, start with filed/column headers.

@Airtable_Support @Airtable_Team can you please respond to this thread with thoughts on priority and timing for this feature? This is frankly the only limitation keeping me from using AirTable for a really big client.

Thanks!

Please include this feature. I have to work in Numbers/Excel and then upload them once they’re done instead of working within airtable. It’s a basic spreadsheet tool and messes up the design for the user. Please respond. I am trying to introduce airtable to a client and that was a major roadblock for them being serious spreadsheet viewers. Thank you!

I would add that the hide column drop down does not offer any respite from this as it neither stretches to accommodate long names or wraps text - opting instead to abbreviate a long column name only with an unhelpful … if it does not fit in the fixed width of the dialogue. This makes identifying and sorting columns very difficult, a must if they are prone to running off screen for width.

I am mostly on board with the decision to keep fixed row heights in grid-view records, long text field types,card views and expanded records soften all of that, but the options are only two with long field titles, stretch the row or use short names.

one note…
If adding width responsiveness or text wrapping to the hide fields drop-down is unpalatable, how about just a tool-tip?

I agree with other posts on this thread. My company would benefit greatly from using a wrap text feature. I would like to see an overview of the cell at a quick glance, without having to click into each cell to expand. That’s a waste of time in my opinion. And, without clicking into each cell, sometimes it’s hard to know if there is more info in a cell or not… so info may be missed, which is upsetting.

Although, I like the option to expand the cells, for other reasons, I would like to have the option to wrap the text in each cell as well. I think it should be a user’s choice.

I would love text wrap in cells. Personally I find Airtable very annoying without this feature. I want to see everything at a quick glance. Instead I have to click to see it or make the entire column wide when only 1 cell in the whole column has more in it. It’s hard to recommend Airtable to others with this missing.

Please include this feature! I have column headers that require a bit of text. We are tired of having to constantly scroll horizontally to view the desired cell.

I’m weighing in on this pretty late.

Please add the capability, but don’t lose the clean look of the main airtable. Make it a “view” that you can set up (similar to gallery, etc)

You’re not wrong about this, but for my use case, I often need to see the full fields for every record in all their ugliness. Fixed height rows means that if I want to scan a comment field (which may be in paragraph form) over all my rows, I’d have to click on each one…

In short - I’m in support of text wrap :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m using this to track multiple activities in a given day. Using one row per day (ideal) means wrapped cells for the tracking.

Also, forcing all cells to be as wide as the widest entry to make long text fields usable seems rough use of real estate. As a product person I appreciate the aesthetics of consistent row heights, but question if it trumps the value for those who do care about longer text cells.

Lastly - if longer text fields are not amenable to your aesthetic, that feels like it will hinder your potential use cases.

Thanks for listening.

Curious what your thoughts are re: the shift+spacebar workaround or a kanban/gallery view exposing multiline text on a card?

Hi Howie!
Thanks for the quick response.
I think I missed the kanban/gallery option. As for the shift + spacebar - the hard part is I have no idea which cells have more than one line or not. As I scan the doc, I would love to see the full context.