How to create a new column in a list
Create your own unique columns to help you categorize, sort, and filter your data quickly. You may notice that the column names will appear in either green, blue, or black font.
- Green columns - enriched fields/columns that Affinity auto-populates
- Blue columns - global fields/columns that you/your team members can manually populate
- Black columns - list-specific fields/columns that you/your team members can manually populate
Note: You will only be able to create global fields (blue) and list-specific fields (black). The enriched fields (green) are provided to you by Affinity by default and cannot be created/deleted.
Overview
Step 1 - Where to create a new column
Step 3 - Determine Field Settings
Step 1 - Where to create a new column
There are two ways to create a new column:
- Option 1: Click + New column at the end of the list by scrolling all the way to the right.
- Option 2: Click the Customize View button, then press the + icon.
Step 2 - Choose a Field Type
After giving the column a name, you will be asked to choose from one of 9 different options:
- Text: (e.g. 2,000 character limit for single notes, descriptions, and summaries).
- Number: (e.g. Deal Amount, Revenue, Company Size). Phone Number is not suggested and should rather be a text-type column.
- Date: (e.g. Birthday, Closing Date).
- Location: (e.g. Address, Company HQ). Location data is populated by Google Maps API.
- Dropdown: (e.g. Interests, Stage, Industry). Unlike the text-type column, dropdown-type columns support multiple values that can also be categorized by filtering.
- Ranked Dropdown: (e.g. Status, Priority, Ranking). Unlike the dropdown-type column, ranked dropdown-type columns only support single values. However, this enables you to not only filter by particular values, but also sort by order.
- Formula: Create list calculations using number-type fields (e.g. Average Ranking, Total Investment Amount, etc.). Learn more about formula fields.
- Person: (e.g. Founder, CEO, Owner).
- Organization: (e.g. Limited Partners, Co-investors).
Step 3 - Determine Field Settings
Next, decide whether the new column should only consist of a single value or multiple values. And last but not least, whether it should be list-specific or global.
- Single Value vs Multiple Value Field: While certain columns only support single values, other columns can also support multiple values.
- If you initially chose Single value field for a column that supports both single and multiple values, you can always change it to support multiple values later on. However, once you change it to a Multiple value field, you cannot change it back to a Single value field.
- If you initially chose Single value field for a column that supports both single and multiple values, you can always change it to support multiple values later on. However, once you change it to a Multiple value field, you cannot change it back to a Single value field.
- List-specific vs Global Field: A column can exist within just the list it's created in (list-specific), or it can exist across all lists of the same type (global). Learn more about Fields: Enriched, Global, and List-specific.