Hi - I am copy pasting a few rows from an excel sheet into a coda table. it changes the column type of 2 lookup columns into ‘select list’ . That’s causing me problems. any way to prevent this?
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Dear @Puneet_Agarwal, welcome to the community 
As far as I can understand for both instances there are multiple options in the selected cell and therefore Coda assumes that you need the “select list”.
You can convert these to a table as shown below:
After that this column becomes a lookup as shown below:
Hopefully this will work out for you, otherwise you will have to update your source doc accordingly and create the tables independendly.
I think there’s a more fundamental issue here that is quite frustrating to deal with when you have to cut’n’paste in data from another source.
The short of it is, I’ve setup a “data table” that I’ll be pasting into. It has the same layout as my source file (XLS in this case, but CSVs are handled the same way) and my columns are typed the way that I want them (text, numbers, currencies primarily).
When I paste in my data, Coda takes liberties with changing my column types. It shouldn’t do that.
Is there a way to “lock” the typing on my destination table so that the paste doesn’t trigger Coda to change the column types?
My workaround right now, which is quite frustrating, is that every time I paste in, I have to go and change the column types that Coda set back to the types that I had originally. This is tiresome and unnecessary, IMO.
Thanks much!
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What I have found is that if you are pasting values into an entirely empty table, Coda will overwrite the column type with its best guess.
BUT if you have at least one row with actual values in it that match the set column type, a copy paste will not override the column type.
So often when I’m copy pasting values I create a dummy row first with actual values in it, then copy paste below.
Again, this has worked for me in many many different scenarios but I haven’t actually tested specifically for it. Give it a try @Thomas_Robbs1 !
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Thanks for that suggestion @Scott_Collier-Weir . I’ll give it a try.
However, I’d still argue that it would be nice if a Coda table could be configured to not exhibit this behavior. From a typing perspective, it affects “downstream” functionality that has been built into the doc when Coda changes the types in a way that is incompatible with the expected type downstream.
There is another issue that I posted related to CrossDoc behavior that seems to be related to the same core problem.
It makes sense that its frustrating - It gets me from time to time as well! My absolute guess without having any knowledge as to why it was structured is this:
Coda is aiming to have a user-friendly entry point so that anyone can start using Coda for the first time and find themselves creating wonderful and useful documents. (Highest ceiling for a product and lowest floor concept) -
Therefore, my guess is that structuring the columns so that they “guess” the column type from the data that is inputted is a feature to benefit new users adopting the platform. In a lot of ways it’s really helpful, and I can definitely see the benefit for someone coming over from a spreadsheet narrative.
Im guessing it was then a trade-off - because it can be obnoxious for more seasoned or power-users of documents who don’t need or want that feature often.
Happy for anyone else to chime in though - All in all, Im suggesting its possibly a feature that was intentionally chosen with new users in mind.
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Agreed. Hoping Coda can now enhance this feature now to lock column types. 
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PLEASE fix this. It is VERY frustrating to have to fix my column types every time I paste in new date. Considering there is other way to link Excel data I’m stuck repairing my column types every day.
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