What might cause “Allow quick adding of new options” not to be honoured?

1

In what known situations would enabling the “Allow quick adding of new options” setting on a table’s Relation column not actually allow creation of new entries?

Background

  • In a doc I’m building, I have a rather complex table containing (among many other columns) a Relation column pointing to its own table.
  • I have “Allow quick adding of new options” enabled.
  • However, when viewing entries in this table, I cannot create new rows by typing in the name of a non-existent entry—I can only select existing entries.

What I’ve tried

  • I’ve read the docs, but they unfortunately don’t state any known circumstances under which the setting would not be honoured. This is all that’s offered:

    You can also choose whether to allow quick adding of new options. When this is toggled on, you can add rows to your referenced table directly from the relation column.

    Ideally it would then go on to say:

    Note: quick adding of new options is disabled (even if toggled on) when:

    • …
    • …

  • Thinking it might be a bug, I’ve created a fresh doc with a very simple table that features just a Text column and two bidirectional Relation columns with the option enabled. However, this table lets me create new rows as expected.

  • My original table has a formula-based filter on the items to be displayed in that column’s dropdowns, so I tried fully removing the formula in case that was the cause. Even after removing the filtering, I still couldn’t add new entries from the dropdown.

  • I tried putting a formula into my test doc. I was still able to add new entries from the dropdown as expected. I feel I can conclude that the filtering is not contributing to the behaviour I’m seeing.

My question

  • The “Allow quick adding of new options” setting is evidently not always honoured.
  • What situations cause this setting not to be honoured, are there any suggested workarounds, and can this info be added to the docs?
2

I’ve worked it out: it depends on the settings of the display column.

  • If the display column is of type Text and has no formula, then it will work as expected.
  • If the display column is of type Text but has a formula, then the dropdown will effectively prevent creation of new options.

Admittedly this now makes a lot of sense, but it’s still probably obscure enough that it would benefit from a mention in the docs. Is there a way I can draft and submit a proposed edit to that page?

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