The Long Text field in Airtable is currently way too small.
It was previously possible to expand the size of the long text field to make it easier to read…. long text….
I wish that they would bring back the option to resize this field so that it wasn’t such a pain to use. If resizing isn’t possible to bring back, then I wish that they would either:
1) Expand the default size significantly; 2) Allow users to make the long text field full screen; or 3) Make the Long Text input box responsive so that it increases and decreases in size based on the amount of long text that is in the field.
This would prevent users from having to constantly scroll to see long text in the long text field. We don’t need this to be as feature friendly as a full scale text editor (although that would also be great), but it should at least allow you to easily see the long text that is in this field without having to scroll for hours. It’s a huge pain to use for long text in its current form.
So much wasted space!!!
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There was never an option to resize the height of that field, but Airtable already offers what you’re looking for in interfaces.
If you create an interface page, all of your long text fields will automatically expand to show you the entire height of the long text field.
No matter how long your text is, the long text field will automatically expand as tall as it needs to be for you to see everything.
One thing to keep in mind is that Airtable’s perspective is that all of our daily work should be done in interfaces. They now see the “Data" layer as simply a “backend data repository” for the interfaces. Airtable wants everyone to be ideally working out of interfaces.
I don’t necessarily agree with this decision, but this is how Airtable is designing their product.
I don’t believe that you are correct on that Scott. I am nearly 100% certain that the option DID exist, even if it was for a short period of time. This was well before Interfaces or Apps existed. Maybe in 2019 or 2020? I used the resize feature a lot at that time. It was necessary when dealing with long text if you wanted to see what you were writing.
It’s possible that they removed it at the time that they were introducing Interfaces, or Apps, or the other names they have gone by that I can’t remember now, but I am saying that this is a bad decision that should be rectified in one of the many ways I suggested.
Even if they want people to work in Interfaces, the size of the modal in the data view is still frustratingly small, and seemingly without good reason. On a small monitor, the size of the modal is less than 25% of the screen. On a large monitor, it’s closer to 10%. That’s way too small to be useable in the data view, which is where a lot of people still do a fair bit of productive work. I use Interfaces for a lot of things, but it doesn’t make sense for ALL things.
Very interesting! If they did have that at one point in time, it would be awesome if they could bring that back! I have long been frustrated with having to scroll through that long text field in Data view.
Maybe you can open up a support ticket with support@airtable.com to ask them to bring this feature back. Maybe it’s even a bug that they’re not aware of.
Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, I’m not using a supported browser and would prefer to have this built into Airtable natively, rather than having to rely on external scripts. But I do appreciate you taking the time.
