Highlight multiple fields to drag and move?

[Eli_Facenda]

Does anyone know how/ if it is possible to highlight multiple fields and move them over together?

I know in excel/google sheets this is very simple but I am having trouble with Airtable. The use case is that let’s say I decided to create 3 new fields for a table and accidentally added them on the right and now want to re-order them. To group the 3 together and move all the way to left side it looks like I have to do it 1 by 1 for now.

Any ideas?

[W_Vann_Hall]

On a recent project I have a table with (at present) 73 fields. Some of the more recently created fields — that is, the ones to the far right — are alternative fields for ones defined much earlier — i.e., far left. (While most of the base is gender-agnostic, in some cases it was easiest simply to create separate fields for men and women, letting the user choose which gender’s field to display and which to hide.) Organizationally, though, I wanted the hidden and unhidden fields adjacent in the table, which meant dragging the new fields and positioning them besides their distaff counterparts — an unpleasant amount of dragging when you’re talking so many fields.

I finally got the bright idea of hiding all of the fields but the one(s) I wished to move and the one(s) besides which I wanted to place them. Once everything extraneous was hidden, I moved the fields directly in the ‘Find a field’ list that opens when one selects “## hidden fields.” (‘Grab’ the 6-dotted icon after the field name in that and drag it upwards or downwards to the desired placement.) Together, these two techniques? approaches? greatly accelerated the use of Airtable.

[AlexWolfe]

I second this - moving fields in the ‘hidden fields’ drop down is much easier, albeit, you cannot move more than one at once.

[W_Vann_Hall]

AlexWolfe:

albeit, you cannot move more than one at once.

Yes — but I’m rarely organized enough to know in advance I’ll be moving a block of fields. :winking_face:

Actually, the ‘hide all fields you don’t want to have to drag past’ trick is the real time-saver for me. Admittedly, it works best during initial development, when I’m typically working from a grid view with all fields shown. Later on, when I’m tweaking how linked tables will display when called from another table or fine-tuning grouped and filtered views, remembering which fields need to be switched back on after moving a field becomes more problematic…

And with a large number – 40? 50? – of fields, moving a single field in the hidden fields drop down can become insanely frustrating. Well, moving it is no problem, once you get the hang of tickling the drop down to make it scroll without ‘dropping’ the field you’re trying to move. Getting it to land where you want, though, is something else: The lag as Airtable bravely struggles to keep track of field order always has me dropping the field a slot too high or too low on the list. Maybe it’s poor hand-eye coordination…

[Optimi]

Looks like this one still hasn’t been solved. We’re dealing with a table with over 150 fields and about half of them need to be moved around… what a mind bend having to do it one field at a time!!

[Eamon_OConnor]

This is another one of those frustrating aspects of Airtable that you come across sometimes. Sure it might not be “best practices” to have a table with 100+ fields, but lots of us do. And while it’s certainly possible to come up with hack-y little tricks to make it easier to move columns one by one, I can’t think of a real downside to implementing a feature that seems to come standard in other similar products. Please help us Airtable devs!

[Markus_Wernig]

Why can’t we first select multiple “hidden and/or active” fields and then move them as a block to where we want them to go?

My base has grown to 70+ fields - a lot of them hidden. I am constantly making adjustments by adding new fields. It’s turning into a monster. I have lots of different views. Those new fields are all over the place when I switch from view to view. Workarounds are potentially creating more work.

Please, please, please - if someone at Airtable is listening - please give us some tools to make (hidden and active) field organization easier!

Thank you!