How to Move Fields in Multiple Views

[Brittany_Innes]

Hi there, I’ve added a new custom field to my primary view and put it the order I want it to be with my other fields. When I navigate to a secondary view that custom field is alllllll the way at the end of my view (not where it is in my primary view). Is there a way to customize the field so that it’s at the beginning of every view? Does that make sense?

[TimW]

I have a similar case.
I have added a new field to the primary Grid View and want it displayed in a certain position in all my saved views (e.g. 6th column from the left). Is there a way to do this easily without having to open all my views and move the column individually? This becomes particularly arduous and error-prone if I make several field changes…

[Mike_McLaughlin]

As I just tested, Airtable orders the fields in a view in the same way as the view you are looking at, at the time of creation of the new view.

If you add a new field, it will default to the end of the views because in the case that each view has a different field order, it would then distort that order. So the only predictable behavior is to move new fields to the end of all existing views.

Additionally, from a best-practices stand point, the data structure(fields) of a table should be complete before building on top of it(i.e. many views)

[Sake_Nova]

This is extremely annoying and bad functionality. AirTable please change this!

[Alex_Morgan]

I agree with @Sake_Nova, it would be super helpful to have the ability to mirror field ordering between selected views, or even just between all views.

My use case is that I’m using Airtable for candidate management for a hiring process. I have about 10 different views on the same information and am continually refining the fields to optimise the process. The issue is if I add a new field, e.g., ‘Next Action’, which I would want near the beginning, then I have manually go through each view and drag this field from the end to the front.

Thanks!

[kuovonne]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

While it isn’t possible to batch apply a field order to all views at once, you can copy the field ordering between individual fields. This support article has more info on copying view configurations.

[Alex_Morgan]

Hi @kuovonne. Thanks for your response!

That’s great, I didn’t know you could do that. This certainly helps to mitigate the problem.

I still think a feature to lock the configuration between views would be very helpful.

Thanks,

Alex

[Alexandra_Scott]

I agree with @Alex_Morgan – always optimizing my process, so I have a lot of ongoing config changes that have been causing me major headaches.

Thank you @kuovonne for noting this feature (knew it was there, but had completely forgotten I could apply it in this use case). You just put sooooo much time back in my pocket and saved me a ton of aggravation!

[Gerard_M]

This “best practice” is bogus. It implies BDUF (Big Design, Up Front.) The reason we use AirTable is because we can let the schema emerge as our understanding of our needs evolve. We are adding new fields on a regular basis. And we’ve have many view since we first created the table.

[Jay_Lopez]

Great point @Gerard_M, that agility is exactly what makes Airtable great. It would be a game changer to be able to copy settings to multiple views at once.