Add new value to Lookup Column from Forms

Suggestion Box Bugs
1

Hello @mallika,

I think I found a bug.

I have a form element that lookups a list of cities from a different table. The idea is to let the user select an existing city on the list or add a new city.

With the option Allow Quick Adding of New Items enabled, I can add new cities on that element from the results table, but I am not able to do the same if I enter the data through the form.

Results table:

image
image832×130 2.74 KB

Form:
image

Thanks!

6 Likes
2

Hey Joel, thanks for reporting this to us!, I’ll report this into our internal tracker so adding quick items from Forms can be performed adding another entry point. Hopefully this can be resolved soon :+1:.
Regards.

2 Likes
3

Just ran into this problem myself, and very happy to see it’s already being worked on!

1 Like
4

Running into this same problem as well!

I’m unable to add new items via the ‘Published Form’ view, despite having ‘ALLOW QUICK ADDING OF NEW ITEMS’ checked for the item in question, and it working in the normal layout views.

Would love to see this happen, otherwise having a blast with Coda.io : )

1 Like
5

Any update on this? I am having the same issue. Users can’t add new items through the dropdown menu in a form, however if I change it to radio buttons there is an option to add a new item.

Thanks!

1 Like
6

I’m running into this as well, would be great to get a solution. Thanks

7

Interested in this as well! Or some other easy way to add an “Other” field to multiple choice form field

8

Ahaa - I wished I’d found this discussion - spent all day trying to figure out what I was doing wrong : :expressionless: Looking forward to a fix and thanks for post and comments

1 Like
9

Any updates on this? Could really use it!!

10

This isn’t working for dropdown or radio buttons.

11

i am surprised the form editor offers the option for ‘quick add’ as the run-time behavior of forms does not support modifying rows on other tables, just gathers values and inserts them to the form’s own table.

i think the bug is in offering this option in the form editor, and not a bug in the execution of the form.

i may be wrong - but it might explain why there was not a quick and easy fix for this from the engineering team.

open to correction

max

12

Wow. It’s been more than year. No fix. This seems like a very common pattern for form input, just as it is with normal tables.

2 Likes
13

I just run into this issue. Any workaround?

14

There is a work around, but it is a bit of work to set it up. At the same time, there are some benefits:

  1. add an extra field to your form to allow the entry of a missing_lookup (I call this column missing_lookup, but call it whatever you want)
  2. make an automation to check on new rows (in Coda ‘Row changed’) in your receiving table by checking if this missing_lookup field has content (i.e. changed)
  3. optional: check if the form submission comes from someone that is in list of users who are allowed to add new items to the lookup list
  4. add a row to the lookup list with the new item
  5. if the lookup field is indeed blank, copy (with modify rows) the new item (from missing_lookup) to the blank lookup field.
  6. optional: make the missing_lookup a hidden column, since you won’t use it for anything else

You can add a checkbox column to your lookup list and mark items that are added through this procedure. This allows you to quickly check new items and see if you really want those in your lookup list, correct spelling mistakes (which corrects the new form submission at the same time). Unmark when done, or leave the mark so you can later check how often this has happened.

5 Likes
15

Brilliant, I never thought about using automation for this, requires a couple of extra steps but it gets the job done! Thanks for sharing @joost_mineur !

1 Like
16

Hi,
Will Coda be working on this? Your forms are an essential part of getting data into the Coda system, so there should be more proactiveness on the different form bugs

17

Hi @Eric_Koleda, not sure if you are the right person for this. But this issue has not yet resolved. Would be great if coda can work on this. Thanks

18

been three years, 2023 July 1st, still no update on this small fix?

19

Not a bug
But a very impressive limitation of Coda forms compared to any other form solution out there.
Can we hear anything from you, guys?
@khanh @noah @DavidK

20

I am also interested how this function turns out in implementation: I am in favor of allowing “adding new option” using the form input by the external user; but I also understand the concerns about protecting the integrity of our tables.

Anyone has other opinions?

1 Like