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Enter and return

  • November 3, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 94 views
C
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This might be a super simple one, but I wasn't able to find it in the Keyboard shortcuts and it's been driving me crazy.

In excel, when you are entering a sequence of cells in horizontal order (tabbing after each one), if you hit Enter/Return, you return to the place where you clicked, so you can continue entering the same sequence of cells.  

In Airtable, you hit enter and it puts your cursor in the cell directly below.  So you have to hit enter again, and shift-tab back, or ctrl-left back to the very start of the row.  

Oh how I long for fewer strokes to get back to where I started entering!  Anyone know the trick?

 

Thanks!

 

Craig

    3 replies

    Arthur_Tutt
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    • Arthur_Tutt
    • Brainy
    • 119 replies
    • November 3, 2023

    Hey @Craig_Toohey  first thought that comes to mind is could you input the data into excel and then just copy / paste to airtable?

    The second thought that comes to mind is that Airtable is an automation tool, why are you inputting all this data manually? If it is coming from another source, could you not just automate the data input? 

    Maybe if you can provide a bit more context on your data flow (where it comes from, how it's structured) I can help come up with a better solution for you 🙂

    S
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    • Sho
    • Inspiring
    • 560 replies
    • November 3, 2023

    It can be moved left, right, up, and down with the arrow keys, and to the right with the TAB key.

    C
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    • Craig_Toohey
    • Author
    • Known Participant
    • 11 replies
    • November 3, 2023

    @Arthur_Tutt - Thanks for your reply. 

    Shop manager is entering purchase order line items in Airtable.  He types in a SKU (lookup), a Quantity (number), and a note (single line text), and then hits enter.  He then has to arrow key or tab to get back to the next line where he enters another SKU. 

    In excel, if SKU, Quantity, and Note happened in columns A, B, and C, and you clicked in A to start entering, you'd enter info in column A, hit tab, enter in column B, hit tab, then enter in column C, and hit enter.  Excel would automatically return you to column A.  Airtable does not do this.

    While some may use Airtable exclusively for automation, and we do as well, that is not our only use case.  We do plenty of manual data entry in Airtable directly, whether through grids, lists, or interfaces.

     


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