I have been testing out the rich text option and it has been great so far. I place a lot of dates in my notes section and would like to have a date option in the Rich Text box.
Is this possible and does anyone else have a need similar to this?
I don’t want to speak for Airtable, but I think this would be pretty difficult given that rich text support is implemented using a subset of the Markdown specification, which doesn’t have any support for dates.
But your idea is a curious one - how would this feature work. I assume you’re at a point in the document where you need a date; you select an icon representing a date object and Airtable would display a date selector? You then choose a date and it gets inserted at the cursor location? Was that what you were thinking?
If your interest is simply a macro-like feature to generate dates (or anything for that matter) most platforms leave those types of features to the keyboard macro tools.
For example, if I want “12-Nov-2019” inserted into my Airtable rich text field at the cursor, I simply type \d which automatically expands to 12-Nov-2019 (even here in the community). I did not have to type the date - it just expanded instantly and I did not have to enter the space after it. As you can see - it works in Airtable:
I have dozens of macros that do many different things such as a code block here in the forum (i.e., \c) expands to:
Example Code
comment…
comment…
comment…
Code
…
One of the biggest advantages to keyboard-based templates is the speed that they can be dispatched and the fact that any approach that ties these macros to the platform (such as Airtable) do not work in other realms where you also likely type a fair bit of content.
Keyboard macros tend to become an extension of your muscle reactions. As such, once you adopt something like Text Expander, you expect these subtle productivity enhancers to be omni-present. Indeed, any investment in a system that saves time should ideally work everywhere you use your keyboard.
Narcissism and Laziness (from here down)
Wherever I happen to be communicating with others, I tend to promote my services and skills. Here in the Airtable forum I often make mention of Airborne, a search technology that I frequently use to help Airtable clients with search solutions. To do that, I simply type \as and this is what pops out of my keyboard:
You might want to take a quick read of this whitepaper about fast full-text search indexing across Airtable tables, bases, and even multiple workspaces.
I also have a number of shortcuts for popular historical quotes in the forum such as this one from @Chinara_James which I am always referencing - tapping out four characters (/qcj) generates this quote block:
That was my idea but I don’t know anything about programming so I appreciate letting me know that this could be difficult.
My specific use case is the following and maybe that can spark another idea:
I use my notes section as a CRM inside of a project. For instance, I’m currently working on project A and inside the notes column I place a date every time I talk to a customer who gives feedback on project A.
11/12/19
Customer likes product
11/13/19
Other customer doesn’t like product
This can get annoying when I’m doing 50+ surveys.
Thanks again for the reply.
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Kendall_Shortt:
I place a lot of dates in my notes section and would like to have a date option in the Rich Text box.
Kendall,
I don’t want to speak for Airtable, but I think this would be pretty difficult given that rich text support is implemented using a subset of the
Markdown specification, which doesn’t have any support for dates.
But your idea is a curious one - how would this feature work. I assume you’re at a point in the document where you need a date; you select an icon representing a date object and Airtable would display a date selector? You then
choose a date and it gets inserted at the cursor location? Was that what you were thinking?
+1 for using keyboard shortcuts. I got hooked on TextExpander a while back, and use it all over the place: data entry in Airtable, writing forum posts, etc. Incredibly helpful!
