Feature Request: Custom Units

Suggestion Box
1

Hi Coda team :waving_hand:

I often find myself needing to display numbers with specific units – like hour, weight ect. – to give more meaning and context to the values.

Right now, there’s no built-in way to define custom units directly in number columns. To work around this, I have to create a separate text column and combine it with the number, which feels clumsy and makes formatting more difficult than necessary.

What I’d love to see:

  • An option to define and reuse custom units (e.g. “Hours”, “Points”, “Steps”) directly in the column format
  • Ideally, this could appear alongside the number (as seen in the mock-up attached)
  • Would make dashboards, trackers, and data tables much more readable and intuitive

Would really appreciate this addition. Anyone else needing something similar?

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PS: Hours / Time units was perhaps a bad example, as there is already a time column type. But the point remains the same - kilos, pounds, meters, miles etc. with custom you can simply give the user the option to define a unit themselves.

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2

Even as basic as expanded currency support please. Philippine Peso (₱) and other unsupported currencies please. Support other non-first-world countries too.

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3

Yes - I think giving the “Custom” option would solve this and other unit issues in the best and most simple way.

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4

Hi Stefan,

Trying to understand the implications of this:

  1. How would formula’s like sum() or operators like > work? Is 1 mile > 1km? How would Coda know the “meaning” of a unit that was created?
  2. How do you convert between different units? Would you do it yourself, or should Coda be able to do it?
  3. Should Coda’s comparison operators throw an error when used to compare rows in the same column? Between that column and another number column?
  4. How should operations like plus, minus etc work? Again, using rows in the same column, and with rows in other numerical columns?.

Regards
Piet

1 Like
5

The first general generic implementation to this should/could be just a “presentation” format option only. No inference on what the custom unit prefix/suffix means. While this can be an issue and user-lapses on unit inconsistencies, maybe coda should provide a mini-info :information_source: that this is only presentation format, and does not convert unit inconsistencies. (Just as how excel handles or present number formatting)

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6

Coda would not need to understand the meaning behind a custom unit. For calculations, Coda could simply check if the custom units are the same and give an error if not. In a next step, Coda could possibly decide, on the basis of a usage analysis, to make certain frequently used units of use comparable with each other, e.g. units of length or weights. But that would also be completely optional for me and not necessarily relevant.

As I said - in a first step, it should primarily be a visual simplification / usability improvement, without mathematical functions. At most, it would make sense to check the uniformity of the custom units in calculations. This would prevent different units from being accidentally calculated together. An alternative approach would also be the possibility of a kind of “Combine” output. e.g. if I divide an hours column with a meters column, X hours/meter is output.

First of all, quite simply as already mentioned: Like in Excel - just a visual display with uniformity check for calculations.

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7

The two most feared words by developers all around the world. :wink:

Can you please share an explanation of how that would be done in Excel, say for ounces, fluid ounces and FDA ounces? or miles and km?

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10

yeah, but that gives you a single UoM per format. Not very useful, is it?

And for that small benefit, Coda needs to rework all numeric formulas, numeric operators and numeric comparisons?

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+1 I’ve created probably a dozen of thousands of columns which are Concatenate(value, " text") or Format() or Join() to show custom units value.

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12

Why rework everything? Coda already gives no meaning to the existing units. You can do mathematics with completely different existing units. Coda ignores it - which is no problem for me. Units are just a variable number with automatically added text that bears no functional meaning.

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13

Could you press the vote button on top? Coda only looks at that measuring relevance. Thanks!

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14

Out of votes for the past several years. Which is the sad indicator how much Coda (does not) consider the community opinion.

3 Likes