"Convert Field type" capability

[Matt_Blais]

Similarly to how Fibery has “Convert Entity to other Type”, there are occasions where it would be useful to Convert a field to a different Type. The existing ability to converting a Name field to/from a Formula is the perfect example of this, but it would be useful elsewhere as well.

E.g., I have a Text field for “Skype” that contains strings like “live:knjamesnc”, and now I realize this field should really be URL, instead of Text.

I could manually create a new URL field and copy/paste all the entity field values using a Table View or script, but that will not preserve existing relationships.

I imagine it could be useful to convert field types between: Text, URL, Date, Single Select, Multi-Select, ProseMirror.

As another example I did an Import from CSV, and one of the CSV fields holds dates, but because some are in a non-standard form they are not imported correctly, so I imported that field as Text… but it will need to be converted to Date eventually when the values get cleaned up.

Yes I know I can clean them up outside Fibery before importing, but that would interrupt my workflow, and misses the point that it would still be a useful ability to Convert Field Types.

[Oshyan]

Basically a subset of this, I think?

Add ability to fully edit fields after creation

One thing I’m finding increasingly frustrating is the inability to edit most aspects of Fields after they’re created. Notion seems to be able to handle this much better, even allowing you to convert between field types (e.g. text vs. multi-select) and maintain some of the data. Another common challenge I run into with this is not being able to set the Default Value after creating the Field. Sometimes I realize later that I want a default value, or sometimes I decide to change it after using it …

Though this might be a better feature request since it’s scoped more narrowly.

[njyo]

Not sure if this, or that post are the main topic for this by now…

Being able to toggle the Name field from Formula back to String is great, but should be possible for other fields as well to enable maintenance tasks such as:

1. Converting a multi-select to a single-select
2. Convert a multi-relationship to a single relationship
3. Find and create a relationship based on certain fields
4. etc.

I know that I can…

1. Manually copy-paste fields, but on tables with 1000 entries that gets cumbersome.
2. I can create a temporary button, but these buttons are visible for all

The easiest way IMHO is:

1. Create a new formula field
2. Create my formula and ensure the outcome is right
3. Convert this into a static field of the same (correct) type

Thanks!