Function for CSV Generation/Export

This might be too specific, but I have found a use case already in our company.

At the moment, if you want to send the data of a Coda table in CSV you have to:

  • copy and paste data in another software
  • save the file as CSV
  • do whatever you want to do with the CSV file (in my case email to a partner)

A Coda function that generates a CSV would be useful in things like:

  • one click save csv
  • one click attach to email and send
  • pushing CSV data to future Coda packs

I honestly don’t want to deal with spreadsheets ever again now that I found Coda, but many business partners have their own bespoke/archaic software and the only way to exchange data is through a CSV.

Thanks so much for reading!

33 Likes

I’ve voted for this item as well. It would be very helpful to have a means of automating the export so that the data can be used in other tools. I need to use the data for reporting in another tool and this current manual process makes it impossible to automate the reporting. I suppose there may be a means to get a plug-in for my browser to do this via some keystoke playback, but it’s going to be very dicey and not very reliable.

Is there a way to know if export functionality appears anywhere on the Coda roadmap and when it’s scheduled?

4 Likes

Since I’ve been using Coda religiously for many months now, I’d like to bump this suggestion up.

I think it would work really well if there was a button on each table, or something like that, that you can click and download a quick CSV of the table.

I now have 3 different apps that we use for work which require us to manually copy paste data in a spreadsheet so we can generate CSVs. One of these apps sends a CSV to our fulfilment centre for manual processing. The rest two create CSVs of transactions from OFX and LayBuy so they can be imported in Xero for reconciliation.

There is no way to automate this further, for example with Zapier. You just have to copy the data to a spreadsheet and save a CSV. Please let us save a CSV directly from Coda, I understand it sounds like a backwards solution but it will be a long time before we can automatically push data to all apps from within Coda (e.g. using Zapier). We can use CSVs until then and when the capability arrives we’ll update our docs to push the data automatically.

1 Like

Here’s what I figured:

  • If you select the whole table (view etc), copy it via Ctrl/Cmd+C, and insert into a text file or a text field, you’ll get a valid TSV (Tab separated values) file.
  • You can use some online converter website, e.g. https://onlinetsvtools.com/convert-tsv-to-csv (not affiliated) to paste TSV and get CSV there.

I have a feeling that it should be possible and relatively easy to make a Chrome plugin that would add the button to Coda tables and do the conversion seamlessly. I’m not that comfortable with writing JS though.

6 Likes

That’s not a bad workaround, it’s a bit faster than going through GSheets. You can actually paste the table directly on the online converter and then save as on the right panel.

But I’d rather not paste customer and financial data on a random website, even if I know 99.9% it’s fine. :slight_smile:

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+1. Want to use coda for processing but still need csv for importing processed data into database application.

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I’d also love to see an option to export each table individually into a csv file.

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Same here, it would be so helpful to have a small button on each table to export as csv :slight_smile:

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+1 for this function. Airtable already has this function. Coda should be better!

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1+ for CSV export. Some table’sview is heavily altered to hide column and aggregate table, so copy and paste is not alway ideal.

Also I noticed some people who is not really “tech savy” having difficult selecting the table in a right way to copy: click on top of the table is not always the most obvious choice.

2 Likes

Thanks for the input. I have also noticed this, I need to have a click-by-click walk through on every app that needs a CSV export. And we have 5 or 6 apps that export CSVs manually right now.

I hope the Coda team considers adding this feature. :slight_smile:

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Use Coda API export CSV ?

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Thanks for the input but I think a big point of Coda is that I don’t have to know how to use API. Any workaround that needs API is a non-starter for me and my team.

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+1 here, another feature that should be available soon.

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Hey there is a pack request for CSV - go add your votes to it!

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Thanks for that! I’ll go do it!

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Hi @Michael_RnW,

You might wanna check out this too

Pack requests -Things I use that I desperately want to integrate with Coda 🤣

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+1 for built-in dead-simple way to download a table as a csv. I’d also love to connect this to an automation so that I could, say, download a new copy of a table as a csv every week.

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+1
We really need this feature if we are to use Coda and replace databases across our Org.

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Hi - welcome to the Coda community! We keep track of feature requests like this so our product team can review customer feedback as they plan. I’ll go ahead and add your vote to this suggestion. I appreciate you chiming in :+1:

5 Likes