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At our company, we have tables that can have up to 30-40 columns in them, especially on the “summary” or “master” tables, where data is assembled from other tables. This can get very confusing.
What If we could group similar columns together in a similar way we group rows? Color-coded, collapsible, and individually shareable. It could be quite powerful.
I also second this idea. I’m an experienced user, and while views are great, I still end up with views with 20+ fields in them. I don’t like having many many views as it feels unorganised and I hard to manage them.
How great would it be to group similar fields and expand/collapse them like we do with grouped records! No change to the data whatsoever, just the ability to categorise fields for ease of working with them.
I completely agree. We track license applications in all 50 states using Airtable and each state has it’s own license number, issue date, and expiration date. So we have 200 columns, automatically just on licenses. Not including program placement, statuses, demographics, documents, and all that that needs to be added to track the process of gathering information, applying for the licenses, and then auditing them. It would be nice if we could add 2 or 3 layers of columns that could be collapsed or expanded.
YES! One of my tables has more than 120 fields, I would love it if the hide/show fields panel had filters, like “show only formula fields” or “show all fields linked to X table”, etc.
Views are great for showing the fields you need in order to work with the records, but when you’re still building the base and/or troubleshooting the fields themselves, you don’t know in advance the fields you will need, so you can’t really have pre-created views for that, and even if you did, just building them takes ages when you have large tables like mine, and then you’re left with so many views it’s hard to find the right one.
I agree. Two big things that are making it difficult is grouping columns and text wrapping. Printing for me doesn’t always happen and definitely it would be nice if the grid operated a little more like Excel.
I vote for this. In our org, we have multiple groups looking at the same data and it would be very helpful if fields could be color coded to show group assignment (ie: project management, engineering, marketing, finance, etc.) so everyone can have a visual cue for what data they should be entering or reviewing.
I would also love to see expandable/collapsible column groupings in grid views (which would also group the relevant fields on the cards in kanban views, and in the individual record views). It’s just a good way to organize related fields.
Switching views is a clunky workaround because if you’ve filtered to find the record(s) you need at the moment, you have to re-apply the filter for each view.
Moreover, I could see huge utility in grouping fields within the individual record views, where the column structure doesn’t apply, and switching views is even more clunky. In this case, grouping fields would make a big difference when it comes to organizing and navigating the data stored in each record, when that record is open.
I second this three-year-old idea! Grouping fields (and being able to move around fields and adjust fields at the group level) will be such a great convenience!
We use forms and ask recipients to list up to five “Key Partners” of their project. We collect name, website, and organization status of each of the up to five Key Partners from respondents. So that’s 5x3 = 15 fields that should be clumped together (this is in a table with 100+ fields!)
Another way this can be useful is if we want to encourage Form respondents to select just up to three items from a picklist. Right now with a multiple select, there is no way for us to limit how many from a list of 10 a respondent can select. But if we break this up into three columns, each with the same picklist as the multiple select but instead made each field single select, that’s a workaround! Unless of course Airtable also made a feature to allow limited selecting of multiple select fields for Form respondents :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
I’ll add my voice to this. We’re using Airtable for a complex application process for a university program. Some columns just go together and with as many as we have it will make readability much easier.
Grouping 1: Address, city, state, zip
Grouping 2: Job title, first name, last name
Grouping 3: Reference 1, Reference 2, Ref 3
and on and on.
+1 on this product suggestion! I’d love to be able to group fields together and collapse them when needed. For instance (and just one of many examples), we have several fields related to different roles that apply to each particular record (for instance, writer, editor, and so on). It’d be great to be able to collapse and show those with a click.
Another vote for this feature - I went looking for it recently only to realise it doesn’t exist. The ability to group columns will be of huge use for Base and View development.
