Customizing how to display row names in a dropdown list in a lookup column

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It it possible to change how to display row names in a dropdown list in a lookup column?

I have a table “Ideas” with two columns: “Idea Name” and “Attached to”.

Idea (a row in the “Ideas” table) can be attached to a row from 3 different tables (Initiatives, Projects, Tasks).

“Attached to” column is a lookup column that shows all rows from these 3 different tables with this formula:

ListCombine(Initiatives, Projects, Tasks)

It works fine, but I’d like to change how row names are displayed in a dropdown. Right now it’s just the names of Initiatives, Projects, Tasks all combined into one list. For example:

Design To Do System in Coda
Create Kanban View for Tasks
Style columns in Kanban View for Tasks

I’d like to change it to add pretext to the row names so it’s easier to see what is an Initiative in this list and what is a Task. Example:

Initiative: Design To Do System in Coda
Project: Create Kanban View for Tasks
Task: Style columns in Kanban View for Tasks

Is it possible?

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Dear @Andrei_Kharlanov,

Although I always prefer to have a dummy doc, before giving a reply, I decided to give it a shot.

Did you considered to use concatenate () in a new column and make this one the display column?

1 Like
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Thank you for the suggestion, @Jean_Pierre_Traets!

Yes, I though about creating “Full Name” column in “Initiatives”, “Projects” and “Tasks” tables with Concatenate() and making it the display column, but then this column values will be used everywhere, even in places where you can choose from a list of only Projects, for expamle. And it adds visual clutter:

Screen Shot 2020-08-21 at 8.44.04 PM

I wanted to add “pretext” in a list that is constructed with ListCombine() from a few different tables only.

But having an option how to show the values (have pretext etc) would be useful even for lookup column from one table.