Wrapping Text in field / cell

[amymo]

Is there a way to wrap the text in a filed name?

[ScottWorld]

Unfortunately, no. :frowning: It’s a major limitation of Airtable. People have been requesting this for almost 5 years, but Airtable rarely listens to user feedback. You can, however, add your voice to the chorus of voices by emailing support@airtable.com and requesting this feature.

[Bill_French]

ScottWorld:

but Airtable rarely listens to user feedback.

There is no shortage of requests that have been summarily ignored by Airtable. However, in this particular case, there’s a rumor that you might see a capability to do exactly this. I’ve only heard tiny tidbits and a few clues of what may be coming, but let’s hypothesize what this might look like given some obvious indicators.

Views

There have been a lot of indications that views - arguably one of the best parts of Airtable - are central to how users share their information. Indeed, this is apparent in the numerous and pervasive ways that we embed views in web pages. This feature sits at the center of pretty much everything we do with information in Airtable. It is central to filtering, grouping, and findability. It is without debate, a key competitive advantage.

The natural progression for innovation is likely to occur around Views.

Customizable Views

Imagine if Airtable made it possible to customize the style of a view (using CSS and HTML perhaps) and even made it possible to color content, adjust font sizes, change the header styling, and support other event-related behaviors. Imagine if Airtable fundamentally supported a view as ostensibly an app. This would make it possible to embed very powerful view apps into web sites. Imagine publishing your own mobile “app” that is essentially a tightly bound view of data much the way Coda already does this.

I believe this will soon be a reality because it would solve a litany of challenges that almost 50% of the user base currently ask about. If they moved forward with custom views – as I predict they will - there would be almost certainly a capability to apply formatting to the content. And with that - you would see the ability to define cell widths allowing for cell content to be sized, wrapped, truncated, etc. This would likely allow us to separately style field headers - another issue in the long list of display limitations in what is often regarded as one of the best UIs in the low/no-code segment.

Yep - I’m confident this is coming. No software company in Airtable’s unique position would miss such an opportunity to advance its competitive advantage while putting smiles on a lot of customer faces.

[ScottWorld]

That would be very nice, but for now, we still need something more basic:

The basic ability to adjust the height of the column headers in grid view.

I’d love for Airtable to get some of the basics right.

[Bill_French]

ScottWorld:

The basic ability to adjust the height of the column headers in grid view.

The reason this obvious and necessary feature has gone unmet for years is likely because someone on their team previously built a “basic” functionality without any deference to long-view implications.

ScottWorld:

we still need something more basic:

And if you compel them to do something basic, they will fall victim to the innovators dilemma, a debilitating downward spiral of incrementalism instead of game-changing leaps that sustain a sizable market differentiation.

Once you do something in a half-baked fashion, you are almost certain to repeatedly foster follow-on half-baked improvements to overcome previous half-baked improvements. That cycle is almost impossible to break and it leads to people like you and me accusing the company of building a collection of poorly-designed features.

[Olpy_Acaflo]

Bill.French:

Customizable Views

Imagine if Airtable made it possible to customize the style of a view (using CSS and HTML perhaps) and even made it possible to color content, adjust font sizes, change the header styling, and support other event-related behaviors. Imagine if Airtable fundamentally supported a view as ostensibly an app . This would make it possible to embed very powerful view apps into web sites. Imagine publishing your own mobile “app” that is essentially a tightly bound view of data much the way Coda already does this.

I believe this will soon be a reality because it would solve a litany of challenges that almost 50% of the user base currently ask about. If they moved forward with custom views – as I predict they will - there would be almost certainly a capability to apply formatting to the content. And with that - you would see the ability to define cell widths allowing for cell content to be sized, wrapped, truncated, etc. This would likely allow us to separately style field headers - another issue in the long list of display limitations in what is often regarded as one of the best UIs in the low/no-code segment.

Yep - I’m confident this is coming. No software company in Airtable’s unique position would miss such an opportunity to advance its competitive advantage while putting smiles on a lot of customer faces.

oh @Bill.French !
I hope you’re right this time again with your predictions !
I’ve already dream precisely about the way you describe it !

And, in my thoughts / dreams, everything you could create from UI should be programmatically available in CRUD, at least from Custom App SDK :winking_face:

Best,

olπ

[ggritmon]

Adding my support that text-wrapping is an absolutely CRITICAL feature of data tables. Without it, I simply can't transition my project management to AirTable. Airtable has some great features, but I can't forfeit my ability to view all the data at a glance.

It's THAT critical, and such a simple concept I can't understand why they haven't implemented it.