How to Paste column names?

1

Hi,

I often have a coda table to which I want to add many new columns from another table (usually excel or sheets, but could be a coda table as well)

I can paste an example row of data or multiple to create all the columns fast, but then I have to manually click and rename all the columns. This is a big pain and a ton of clicking and typing.

How can I paste a COLUMN NAME (or even better multiple names)? Is there any trick to this? Like creating another table and pulling in the column names for example?

I know I can import csv to get the columns, but that does not work if I already have a table set up with lookups and formulas (also time consuming) and need to add 20 new columns to it…

Thanks for suggestions and saving clicks and carpal tunnels.

2

There is a trick:

  1. Create a new empty row
  2. Fill in the cells for the columns that you want to rename (e.g. copy-paste to those cells)
  3. Right click -> Use as column headers — will apply the whole row as column names wherever a cell is not blank.

com-optimize%20(51)
ezgif.com-optimize (51).gif840×480 404 KB

P.S. And to copy column names, you can just select the columns you need in Coda, copy them, paste to any text editor (e.g. Notepad), and then just select and copy the first row that will have column names, tab-separated. Those will be insertable in Coda cells.

10 Likes
4

What a trick! That’s exactly the king of thing I was hoping for. Thanks @Paul_Danyliuk.

Oh and thanks for a lovely gif! It makes all the difference.

2 Likes
5

Here’s another trick, now to save carpal tunnels while actually adding those new 20 columns. Discovered today by accident:

UPD: just re-read your original post, and seems like you already knew that!

1 Like