Introduction to filtering your tables

When you want data to always be filtered against specific criteria, for everyone.

Filtering with formulas

Filter by multiple parameters with formulas

Filter items out of a table with formulas

When you want data in a table to be filtered against criteria that can easily change, and for everyone to see the same data

When you want to allow everyone to filter data just for themselves.

When you are looking for something specific, as a one-off.

After you add data to your Coda doc, you can add filters to your tables, so that your team can find exactly what they need.

Coda docs have several flexible options for showing specific data in a table, depending on how much and what data you’d like to display. Explore each of the scenarios below to decide which ones are best for each of your tables.

If you know you always want to filter data against specific criteria in a table or view, you can stipulate logic for the rows you want to view (or not view). For example, if your base table includes a list of projects for every team, and you’ve created a page just for the product team, you likely only want to show projects they own on that page.

How to do this:

To create a universal filter for a table in Coda, you can use a formula or our simple filter builder. Both are accessible via the "Filter" button above the table or via the "Options" button (your mouse will need to be hovering over the table for the buttons to appear).

From there you can either write a formula to filter the rows in a table or use the filter builder. To access the formula editor for the table filter, just click on the cursive "f" button above and to the right of the filter section.

Here's what the whole thing looks like in a real doc:

As we saw above, you can write out a formula to filter your table. This can be easier for times when you want to write more complex logic to filter the table on, or if you just prefer writing a formula.

If you're familiar with how formulas in other parts of Coda work, it's important to note that formulas in table filters operate a little bit differently: the way to think about table filter formulas is that your filter is saying "only show the rows where the formula is true".

Here's a simple example: this filter is only returning rows in a table where the "Department" column contains the lookup value "Produce" (you can tell it's a lookup value in the formula by the icon on the right, or by the light blue circle styling around the word in the table).

What if you want to filter by two parameters, like Department and Price? To do this, you can add the word "AND" or "OR" to your formula, for example, Department.Contains(Produce) AND Price <2. If you're a recovering programmer, && will also work. Note that if you use a formula to chain multiple logical statements, you'll want to wrap connected ideas using () for the logic to evaluate properly.

You can similarly use the filter builder to do this manually:

Formulas also allow us to filter items out of a table by typing "!=". If you're new to formulas, "!=" translates to "not equal" and is really just adding "!" in front of the equals sign to denote that you don't want the values to be equal.

Here's a simple example where we're going to filter out all the rows associated with a specific owner from a table of tasks:

Of course, you can imagine doing much more elaborate statements or even filtering out by multiple criteria!

A canvas control can be used to filter multiple tables by the same criteria, or if you want the flexibility to choose between having the data filter for everyone, or for each person. For example, if you are in a team meeting and want everyone to be looking at the same data as you discuss it, you may choose to change your canvas control from “personal” to “collaborative.”

To use canvas controls:

You just created a control that can filter your data! Coda has already set up the filter and connected it to the control for you. No further setup is needed. Here's an example of the above flow in action:

You can add a filter bar to any table, allowing teammates to filter values from multiple columns, just for themselves. For example, if multiple members of the product team are working out of the same table, one person might want to see projects that are marked as “high priority,” and “off track,” yet another team member might want to view projects marked “low priority” and “on track.” The filter bar allows both team members to choose their desired criteria, without impacting each other’s view.

To enable the filter bar on a table:

When you want to find data across all visible rows and columns, based on specific criteria, you can use the search function in the upper right of a table. This filters the data just for you.

If you open the filter builder, you can choose to show the search option on hover, always, or remove it.

To remove a filter, click the "filter" button and look for the trash can icon in the right-side panel that pops up. Here's a gif of what that looks like:

Note: this video does not just include personal filters or the search bar.