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JoshWeeman's avatar
JoshWeeman
Qrew Assistant Captain
1 year ago
Solved

Default column widths on embedded reports obscuring data

We're building a new app with the "new" form builder for the first time, and seeing an issue with embedded reports.  The default column width on the embedded table reports is partially obscuring the data, and although you can manually expand each column, there doesn't seem to be a way to make those column widths stick.

Am I missing something, or is this a deficiency of the new form UI?  We have half a dozen apps using the legacy UI with dozens and dozens of embedded tables, and this has never been a problem.

Fwiw, I found the following post describing the same problem on dashboard pages, but this is not a dashboard page.  It's happening on the 'main form' within our tables...  https://community.quickbase.com/discussions/quickbase-discussions/can-you-set-column-widths-for-reports-in-the-new-dashboard-pages/19595

Thanks in advance for any insight.

  • The screen shot that you provided was of what are called v2 "New Style" Reports.  The development on those reports is frozen now and in fact for new clients to Quickbase those reports are no longer available.

    Rather than fix those reports, Quickbase took a step back and completely redesigned the reports from the ground up.  The new Report Style is called Grid Reports.  They run fast and have adjustable column width where both the developer and the end user have the ability to set column widths.  The developer can set the default, but the user can adjust on their own as well, and the system will remember their preference.

    The setting for the Report experience is set at the Application level under  Application Properties and then

    Table report version (Beta). Use new grid reports in this app

    A suggestion would be to either copy your app or after hours flip the setting (you can go back and forth without breaking anything), to start to understand the Grid Reports. It will solve the width issue, but for example the way to use Dynamic filters changes.

22 Replies

  • Has something changed with this situation recently?  All of a sudden last week I had a whole bunch of reports that started having issues with Formula - Rich Text fields that have been working fine until now.  Complete havok as many users started reporting issues with reports not displaying correctly and either users would fix it and the problem kept returning, or they are one of MANY iPad users that cannot change the field width at all on their end.  The only way I have been able to resolve this is by adding underscores.

    • Lauren's avatar
      Lauren
      Qrew Member

      Same issue here. I've been using report formula Rich Text fields to control column widths for dashboard reports. All stopped working last week.

  • This is a known problem which at EMPOWER they indicated in the Keynote by Harrison that they were putting their best engineers on.  The problem seems worse when the number is formatted with a $ sign or as a  %.  So  you can try removing the $ formatting or have a mirror formula field which is used on that report as a plain number which does not have the $ format. 

    The other trick that sometimes works is to override the column heading like this with underscores 

    _My_Column_Heading_Words___

    Because there are no spaces Quickbase may not wrap that column Heading, and hence it will preserve the width as wide as the adjusted label.  But typically you will know the magnitude of the typical numbers in the column so you know how wide the column needs to be even though it won't be dynamic.   

    Please post back with how these work-a-rounds worked.

  • JoshWeeman's avatar
    JoshWeeman
    Qrew Assistant Captain

    Thanks for the suggestions, Mark.  As you can see from this screenshot, treating the values as simple non-formatted numbers did not help in our case, but the underscores_in_column_name workaround does indeed work.  Many thanks for that. (I had tried padding the column names with spaces and hyphens, but neither of those work as you know.)

    Great to have a workaround for now, but WOW, that's astonishing that it's been 2 years since the new form builder UI rolled out and this has been broken the entire time.  The improvements to the new form builder are welcomed, but embedded tables are far too fundamental of a UI element to have made it to launch in such a non-readable state.  Good to hear a solution is in the works.

    Thanks again, this crutch will get us by until QB resolves the issue.

    • MarkShnier__You's avatar
      MarkShnier__You
      Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend

      _Great_thx_for letting _us_know_that_Underscores _are_a_work_a_round_for now.

       

      • StephenN's avatar
        StephenN
        Qrew Member

        Hey! 

        I ran into a similar issue and was able to get around it by renaming the column replacing the spaces using a non-breaking space. 

        ALT code (Alternative):

        On Windows, you can hold down the ALT key and type "0160" on the numeric keypad (not the number keys above the letters) to input a non-breaking space.

  • JoshWeeman's avatar
    JoshWeeman
    Qrew Assistant Captain

    Wow, is this truly still not fixed yet?!? It's been over a year so I just assumed they would gotten around to this by now. I just created a new report today, and to get my column wide enough not to clip the values I once again had to add underscores to the label to pad the column width. Yet the column next to it has a short label and short values and yet is inexplicably wider than it needs to be.

     The fact that columns widths don't automatically size properly, or that we STILL have no manual control over them is unbelievable. The underscores look incredibly unprofessional, and I'm floored this hasn't been addressed after all this time. Sure am glad we have all those AI wizards though. /s

    @MarkShnier__You  Who is this "Harrison" who you said addressed this in a keynote over a year ago? Can we reach out to him and ask him what happened to their "best engineers" that were tasked with this? Were they abducted by aliens or kidnapped by a drug cartel before they were able to crack the apparently unsolvable column width conundrum?

    • MarkShnier__You's avatar
      MarkShnier__You
      Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend

      The screen shot that you provided was of what are called v2 "New Style" Reports.  The development on those reports is frozen now and in fact for new clients to Quickbase those reports are no longer available.

      Rather than fix those reports, Quickbase took a step back and completely redesigned the reports from the ground up.  The new Report Style is called Grid Reports.  They run fast and have adjustable column width where both the developer and the end user have the ability to set column widths.  The developer can set the default, but the user can adjust on their own as well, and the system will remember their preference.

      The setting for the Report experience is set at the Application level under  Application Properties and then

      Table report version (Beta). Use new grid reports in this app

      A suggestion would be to either copy your app or after hours flip the setting (you can go back and forth without breaking anything), to start to understand the Grid Reports. It will solve the width issue, but for example the way to use Dynamic filters changes.

      • JoshWeeman's avatar
        JoshWeeman
        Qrew Assistant Captain

        Thanks Mark, the v3 grid reports look like a much more evolved user experience. Frankly it's what I think we all expected from QB years ago. Glad they finally got around to it. Too bad they couldn't have just fixed the column width issue in the v2 tables in-situ.

  • If yu are using tyhe V2 New style reports, what I do to force the column width is to do a column override on the report's field name with underscores and no spaces.

    • solar-nenad's avatar
      solar-nenad
      Qrew Member

      Our app has Grid reports enabled in App settings but the Grid type reports are not shown as an option to show the embedded report in any form. Are Grid reports supposed to be used inline in a form?

      • MarkShnier__You's avatar
        MarkShnier__You
        Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend

        I think the new V3 grid reports only work on new style forms. Are you using legacy forms or new style forms?

    • areiland's avatar
      areiland
      Qrew Trainee

      Mark, even with underscores, I still cannot seem to make this formula percentage type field display properly on mobile. It always cuts off no matter what order it's in on the report. I seemingly tried every column option with no avail. Any ideas without having to switch to the V3 grid report style?

      • MarkShnier__You's avatar
        MarkShnier__You
        Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend

        Thank you for providing those screenshots. But I think you are missing an underscore between the two words.  

  • Can you post a fresh screen shot of the issue.  Does this only happen on an iPad? Are you in landscape mode holding the iPad?

    • areiland's avatar
      areiland
      Qrew Trainee

      Happens on both iPad and iPhone on vertical and horizontal mode.