Bases: Support Multiline Multirow Editing (Edit multiple files at once)

I really love the new Bases-Feature and have high hopes for it’s development!
I think there is some huge potential here - e.g. with Multiline Editing for smooth Metadata-Updates across multiple files

Use case or problem

Often times you want to add the same tag/value to a property-field in multiple files
→ e.g. all files in this folder should get a specific tag

Proposed solution

this could be creatly facilitated by introducing multiline-edits to Bases!
This could work in multiple ways:

  • select multiple lines (files) in a Base and then start editing a property (e.g. adding a tag) → that tag should be added to all the selected files simultanously
  • allow “dragging down” a value like in excel → the user can select a property-value and then drag down to copy it over to other files below
  • allow the user to copy/paste values (even multiple ones for tags/lists) into multiple lines (files) in a Base

This functionality could really improve how we can manage our “metadata” across multiple files in Obsidian - especially combined with the ability to quickly filter Bases for the desired files to change together!
I think it would be a huge win to enable a new way of “batch changes” in our vaults!

16 Likes

Just asking how left clicking a table cell or dragging selection across different cells/rows works currently?

Based on this image

Left clicking a table cell can at least delete list items. I’m not sure about other features, for example can you edit single values and what happens when you left click these items like “A pattern Language”. Why these text values are underlined?

Currently left-clicking and dragging does seem to do nothing - a single click into a cell lets you edit the content of the corresponding property though.

Left-clicking “A pattern Language” will open the corresponding note - those text-values are underlined because they are links :slight_smile:

I thought internal links are not rendered in bases, source:

hmm might be a misunderstanding :slight_smile: All I can say is that links are definitely rendered in all the Bases I have!

Yes, that would help so much with batch changes

2 Likes

Currently we can edit one value at a time. Can we edit/ paste a scalar/ constant to multiple selected cells (i.e. operate on selected n cells together).

5 Likes

Use case or problem

It would be great to be able to select multiple cells and paste from keyboard. Useful when multiple cells (eg in a single column) should have the same value.

Proposed solution

Add support for multi select and pasting data from the clipboard.

Current workaround (optional)

Editing the notes using other means

5 Likes

+1 for this and probably the following FR should be merged with this one: Select and edit multiple rows - Feature requests - Obsidian Forum

2 Likes

Use case or problem

Made a selection with bases. Had to change (edit or add or delete) the content of a field (a tag) of multiple rows (records) of the table. At the moment I have to do that record by record.

Proposed solution

It would be nice to have a possibility to select multiple rows in a table to bulk edit a field in the selected rows.

Current workaround (optional)

edit row by row

Related feature requests (optional)

8 Likes