I would love the ability to set a standard date format across all of my bases when a date is used in a formula field, or for the formula field to use the same date format as is set in the date field it refers to.
It’s not a huge issue to use the DATETIMEFORMAT function in the formula field, but when you have to do this 20-30 times, it would sure be nice to be able to set a default across the base, or to simply mirror the formating in the date field being referenced.
I made an app that has the capacity to change the configuration options of several/every field of a particular type at once including:
Date and Date-Time fields: date and time formats
Checkbox and Rating fields: color and icons
Percent and Number fields: precision
Currency fields: precision and symbol
Duration: format
It will eventually be able to also edit the following:
Single and Multiselect fields: match all select options including colors across fields
Record Link fields: “prefers single record link”
Due to API limitations the app will not be able to adjust Rollup or Formula field configurations.
The app is not available yet, and I have not decided whether or not I will ever release it even when its “finished”. For those curious, it currently looks like this:
Edited to add: If you’ve selected more than one field to edit, the first dropdown in the second screenshot lets you select a field as a “base”, meaning you can just import that field’s current settings and apply it everywhere. Otherwise just edit the appropriate settings.
Interesting. I’m glad to see someone working on this. I would love to see Airtable add the ability to set default options out of the box, but I imagine that these features aren’t high on their list of priorities as they’re more of a want than a need.
The one that takes most of my time is the date format. I almost always want YYYY-MM-DD which is never the default, but I can see that it would be very useful to ensure consistency of rating fields, single and multiselect, etc.
Please post back here if you ever decide to release it. I’d love to check it out.
I agree. My goal with this particular project is to just offer it up to Airtable as a feature to add to everyone. I’ve said before “I want Airtable to make me obsolete.” Otherwise it would just become another product I would sell. Its useful enough (and frankly, easy enough to code which is why I was able to make it in about two days) that it should just be adopted as a settings panel of some sort.
