Product Suggestion: allow column headers to wrap field names onto multiple lines

[ScottWorld]

It would be a real game-changer — and totally awesome — if the column headers at the top of Airtable’s grid view would wrap lengthy field names onto multiple lines.

Other spreadsheet programs allow for variable heights of the column headers — we should have the same capability in Airtable.

Currently, Airtable cuts off the text of lengthy field names, but it’s our only choice if we want to keep our columns tight & narrow. If we want to see long field names, we are required to keep our columns extra-wide, which wastes a lot of screen space.

Check out the screenshot below for an example of this problem. Notice how much wasted space there is, simply because we want to see the field names above.

Our users often request descriptive field names so that they can understand exactly what they are looking at in the rows below. But descriptive field names end up making the column extremely wide.

Yes, we could come up with some sort of abbreviation for the field names, but it’s nicer for our users to see the entire field name. Yes, our users could also hover our mouse over the field names to see the entire name in a tooltip, but that is inconvenient & it takes time for the tooltip to appear.

In other words, what I’m requesting is either:

1. The column headers should automatically increase their size vertically to accommodate longer field names.
2. We should be able to manually change the height of the column headers.

Thanks! 🙂

— ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

[Paul_Warren]

Yes! Also enabling text-wrapping to create rows of differing height would be a huge upgrade visually!

[ScottWorld]

You can currently choose from 4 different heights for your rows, but you can’t yet change the height of the column headers.

[Paul_Warren]

Does Airtable have an option for allowing rows to be different heights based on a text-wrapping field? Thereby allowing one record to be smaller or larger than another.

[ScottWorld]

No, but that would be very cool.

[M_Godfrey]

Absolutely agree. In my experience there are a lot of people out there trying to sell Airtable to their team and even clients for reporting etc… I’ve noticed that this is one of the main pieces of feedback from the yet-to-be-convinced. They look at an Airtable base with necessarily descriptive field titles and say something like “You said the UX was great. Does it really need to be that wide to see all the titles?”
It’s a bad first impression.
It will be much easier to sell when the field titles wrap onto multiple lines.

[ScottWorld]

@M_Godfrey I couldn’t agree with you more. This is, in my opinion, a high-priority feature that is much needed in Airtable. People have been requesting this for many years now, and so have my own clients. I would send an email to support@airtable.com to request this.

[Scott_Cohen]

Yes. This feature is badly needed

[Steve_Wyrostok]

Please prioritize this feature being added – working with clients requiring complex field names is difficult – and the sell is difficult to them to use Airtable with this UI limitation.

Because it seems like a basic to most businesspeople, especially those we’re trying to move over to Airtable from spreadsheets, and given that it comes across as a much larger negative than may be realized.

Plus, as the designer working with the system it becomes quickly a drag when having to widen field columns to see the full title “SP 5000’MSL ISA+20C Opt Flaps Max Cruise Block Time 5m Min 100nm” (a typical data point on an aircraft specification – already heavily abbreviated)…especially when the data in the field is something like “34”.

Thanks!

[ScottWorld]

@Steve_Wyrostok That doesn’t sound like a good field name, but it’s still a problem in Airtable nonetheless. Be sure to email support@airtable.com about this — they don’t read our posts here, and this is one of the most critical things they need to hear about.

[Jeanne_Wallace]

Column headers problems for me too. Really need to be able to have text wrap and the ability to change the height. Formatting and alignment—like bold text or centered—would be icing on the cake! :pray:t3:

Also, when I embed (iframe) a view on my website, the column headers disappear when you scroll down the table. I need them to be frozen in place so that as the table scrolls up under them and you can still see what the column header is.