Copying Data from on Link Column to another with Copy / Paste does not work

User Talk Columns
1

Your Setup:

  • Self-Hosted 5.2.7

Describe the Problem/Error/Question:

I need a verification on this behaviour. I seem to remember that some previous version of Seatable may have worked differently.

Observed behaviour in 5.2.7

  • When I have a link column A, I can easily copy & paste values from one cell of that column to another, even if there are multiple links in the cell :white_check_mark:
  • When I create another, identical column B, linking to the same target table, Copy & Paste does not work eny more :no_entry:
  • I’d like to do that to clean up column A, and have a backup column B in case something goes wrong
  • As a workaround, I discovered that I can copy & paste content from link column A into a text editor, from there back again into link column B, and it works by auto-linking :white_check_mark:

Am I wrong to remember that at some moment in the past, directly copying links from A to B actually worked?

2

I am not aware of any modification. I didn’t find any related item in the changelog either.

Is this a feature you’d like to see supported? (IMHO, the current behavior makes sense. You cannot duplicate a link column, so it is only consequential that you cannot create a new link column and copy-and-paste the links from the first. The detour via a text column is a (clever) hack.)

3

In this case, I probably mis-remembered - wishful thinking maybe :wink:

However, I would consider this a good addition to the many clever detail solutions in Seatable. One thing that I really appreciate is the conceived ability to maintain strict data types, but at the same time make changing one data type to another effortless (and, most of the time, lossless). E.g. by changing a column type.

Therefore, this would just be an extension of the “autolink”-feature that’s already there: Instead of just accepting pasted text in a link column (and then look up possible links by the first column in the linked table), Seatable could do an on-the-fly-conversion of pasted links into text - great!

And I see no reason why this would break anything.