Records

Records are the rows in a table — one customer, one invoice, one expense. Open a table to see its records; click a row to open it.

Add a record

1. On a table you can add to, click New beside its name, at the top of its page. It opens that table's form — to add to another table, switch to it first from the table's name.
2. Fill in the fields, then save — or click ✕, beside the title, to leave without adding it. ⌘ Enter (Ctrl Enter on Windows) saves from any field.
3. In a hurry? Create from a photo or PDF, beside the form (below it on a narrow screen), reads a photo or PDF (a receipt, a card) and fills in the fields for you to check — and keeps the file itself, adding a file field to hold it if the table doesn't have one yet. An invoice's lines go into a line-items field, and the customer it names is linked — or added to its table when it's new. If the file takes too long to read, nothing is added: try again.

To add many at once, use Import many records on the same page — see importing records.

Edit or remove

Change a record right on its page. A section — fields grouped under a heading — has one Edit on its title line, which opens all its fields together. A field outside the sections has its own Edit beside its name: point at the field to see it — on a phone it's always there. The values become inputs in place; save, and the new ones show straight away, with a line in the record's activity naming what changed. Enter saves — ⌘ Enter (Ctrl Enter on Windows) in rich text and line items, where Enter starts a new line — and Esc or Cancel puts everything back.

Only what you changed is saved, so a change someone else made meanwhile stays — to another field, or to a field of the same section you didn't touch.

A file field keeps each file as it uploads, even if you then cancel; on its own, Done closes it. Fields that are worked out — formulas, rollups, automatic numbering and what a reference shows from its record — are never in an editor, and people who can only read the table see no Edit.

To remove a record, click the bin (Delete) at the top of its page. Deleting a record sets it aside rather than erasing it — anyone who can edit the table can find it and bring it back (see Deleted records below).

Edit or delete many at once

1. Tick the checkbox at the end of each row you want to change — or the one in the header to select every row showing (Show more, under the list, brings in the next ones). Up to 200 at a time.
2. A bar appears above the table. Delete removes every selected record after confirming.
3. Or click Edit…, choose one field and enter a value — it's applied to all the selected records. The other fields aren't touched.

Merge duplicates

1. Tick two or more rows that are really the same thing, then click Merge… in the bar.
2. Pick the record to keep and, for each field, the value to keep — the most recently updated filled-in value comes preselected.
3. Files and comments from every selected record stay together on the record you keep; the others are deleted — set aside like any deleted record, so they can come back.

Records in other tables that pointed at the merged-away duplicates now point at the record you kept. That's the one part of a merge that restoring doesn't undo — everything else can come back: the kept record's previous values from its history, the merged-away records by restoring them.

Deleted records

Deleted records are one search away. Pick Deleted in the search box's menu — or type deleted:* — and the table lists its deleted records instead of the live ones, newest deletion first, with when each one was deleted. Only people who can edit the table can search them.

Narrow it like any search: deleted:this_week for what went this week, or add words and field filters to find one record.

Tick the ones you want back and click Restore in the bar. A restored record comes back exactly as it was, and the restore appears in its activity history.

Table managers (and the owner) also get Delete permanently in that bar. It erases the records and everything attached to them — their files, their history, their comments — for good. That can't be undone, so it asks you to confirm first; it's the one action in the app that truly removes data rather than setting it aside.

Opening a record

Clicking a row anywhere — the table, the calendar, the gallery, the map — opens the record on its values. Every field keeps its place, an empty one with a dash, so it's right there to fill in.

If the table groups its fields into sections, the fields without one come first and each section follows in its own panel, under its name — side by side, and with the sizes and alignment its layout gives them.

Beside the values — below them on a narrow screen — the Activity panel shows the latest comments and changes. The comment box sits at its top — write, then Post comment. Whether a comment can be edited or deleted afterwards depends on the table — see comments.

If you manage the table, tick Admins only before posting to keep a comment among the people who manage it: it's marked with a lock, and nobody else ever sees it — not on the record, in its activity, in their notifications or among the account's recent events. Someone it mentions who doesn't manage the table isn't told.

Type @ in a comment, or in a rich-text field, to mention someone who can see the table: they're told in their notifications. Whoever commented on a record, or was mentioned on it, hears about its new comments too.

At the foot of the page, the record says when it was last updated and when it was created — just when it was created, if it hasn't changed since.

Full screen and printing

At the top of a record, Full screen shows the record as a page — laid out as its table's layout says — and Print sends that page to your browser's print window, where you can also save it as a PDF. Every field prints in its place, an empty one with a dash.

Step through a list

A record opened from the table, the gallery, the map or the calendar stays in the list you opened it from — your search, the view you were in, the gallery, the records on the map, or, from the calendar, the records with a date in that field, in date order. Beside the title you see where it sits — 3 of 12 — between arrows to the previous and next record in that list, which go round its ends: next on the last record brings you to the first, previous on the first to the last. The ← and → keys do the same. ✕ closes the record and takes you back to the list, right where that record is — on the map with its pin open, on the calendar at its month with its entry marked.

Editing, commenting and deleting keep you in the list: a save stays on the record, deleting takes you back to the list. A record opened any other way — a link in another record, a mention — has no arrows, and ✕ takes you to its table.

Activity and links

A record's full activity — its comments and a history of changes — opens from View all activity in that panel.

Records in other tables that link to this one through a reference field each get a tab of their own, named after that table as it was written when it was created — a customer's Invoices tab lists the invoices whose customer field names it. The tab is a setting of the reference field: its settings can rename it or take it off, which is how a table that many others point at keeps only the tabs it needs. Beyond a few, the remaining tabs fold into a More menu.

The change history names each edited field and shows its previous value next to the new one. Admin-only fields stay hidden from people who can't see them.

Every change in the history carries a Restore button for people who can edit: it re-applies that version's values as a new change — nothing is overwritten, and the restore itself joins the history. Changes recorded before this feature existed don't offer it.

Share one record with a link

Managers see a Public link panel beside a record's values, saying whether the record has a link. Create link makes one right there, and the panel shows its address, with Copy to copy it and Open to see what its readers see. Anyone who has the link can see that one record — no account needed. The page shows the record's values read-only, with its dates and times in the visitor's own time zone, and stays out of search engines. It leaves out the admin-only fields, and any field whose settings say Not in public links — notes for your team that a customer shouldn't read; the panel names the fields the link leaves out.

• Replace link swaps the address for a new one — everywhere the old link was pasted, it stops working.
• Remove turns the link off entirely.
• Deleting the record makes its link stop working; restoring the record brings the link back.

Pasted into WhatsApp, Messages or another app that previews links, the link shows as a card with the record's name, its table and its first picture, when it has one — nothing the page itself doesn't show. Apps keep the cards they've already shown: replacing or removing the link doesn't take those back, but they no longer lead anywhere.

In the DataWasi apps, managers get the same link from a record's Share button: Share Link… makes it the first time and sends it by Messages, Mail or anywhere else. Replacing or removing it is done here.

Creating, replacing, and removing the link are all recorded in the record's activity history.