Folder for Hidden Columns or hashtags? *Need Organization*

Suggestion Box
1

I often have tables with many columns (ranging 30-50). Usually in these cases the columns come in “families” - What I mean by this is often times I have 2-3 columns that are related or all working in tandem to support one main column that is displayed (usually to break up formulas to not have extremely lengthy/expensive filter() formulas)

I try to sort this visually with some tag at the end of the column name, but this gets difficult and im not as on top of it as i should be. When I have to go fix a formula or look into a certain aspect of how the doc is working (especially if its been a while since I was working on the document) it takes me forever to hide/unhide columns and figure out which ones are dependent on and working in tandem with others.

I would LOVE if we could add some organization to the columns, potentially put them in folders, or add #hashtags to them to group them in families? That would be soooo helpful and save so much time especially when returning to a document after a long time trying to remember how it all fits together.

5 Likes
2

I would personally welcome some kind of “collapsible groups” (similar to the group tab feature on Chrome) which when collapse would only show the visible columns in that group and and when expand would show all columns (hidden + visible sorted the same way as we build them) :blush: .

And if the “group” could contains some kind of notes/description that would be even better :grin: !

On the other side, when building a large table (with many columns) containing columns that could be “grouped” this way, I now tend to use “Paul’s way of building a doc” (having on a page the full table with no hidden columns and use “cleaned up” views of that table on a “display page” where I want it to be) and while building the table, I use conditional formatting to “highlight” the main column of any “groups of columns” I might have in that table, so I can easily see where a “group” begins and ends.

It’s not ideal but after searching for quite some time a “workaround” for this it seems to be what works best for me :blush: .