Inside this article

With buttons, you can add even more interaction to your Coda docs allowing you to turn your doc into a customized app for your team. In this article, we'll walk through:

  • how to get them onto your page

  • how to set them up to do what you need

How to get buttons on your page (or table!)

There are a few ways to access buttons in Coda:

  1. Click Explore then Buttons to see a list of buttons that you can drag onto the canvas.

  2. Type /button anywhere on the canvas to surface a list of button options that you can select and will automatically insert the button.

  3. Create a button column in a table or view (discussed more below).

Pro tip: you can copy and paste buttons and we'll retain them in their entirety so you can move them around as need be!

⭐ Coda Tips!

Check out how to expand your rows to better fit your workflow needs

Setting up your buttons

  1. Not required, but feel free to give your button a name! This will allow you to refer to it in formulas.

  2. Next, you'll want to give it a label, which is text shown on the button to all viewers in your doc.

  3. After giving your button a label and name, we turn our attention to the button's
    "action". "Action" refers to the thing you want your button to do! We offer a few pre-set ones that you can pick from, along with options for where the action will occur, and a few other action customizations--like predetermined values or conditions that would disable the button.

    Pro tip: you can click the cursive "f" next to "Action" to open a formula editor where you can write your own formula to occur when you press the button! This can be preferable to using the menu as you can write some more complex actions.

  4. Finally, customize the look and feel of your button by choosing its size, color, icon, and badge icon!

Voilà! You've got a beautiful button:

More of a visual learner? Check out this video about buttons!

The button column format

In addition to creating buttons on your page, you can use button column types to your tables to facilitate focused collaboration, take actions in third-party apps via packs, or even enable automations. They follow a similar setup flow to buttons on the canvas but create a button for every row in the table.

You would want to use buttons in a table over buttons in a canvas if you want to incorporate content from the row in some form in the button. For example, if you want a button to email a project owner in a table of projects, you would set up a button column and configure it to only email the person in the same row (hint: you'll want to use the GMail pack and the "thisrow" object!).


Some button examples

Coda Tips!

RSVP buttons

In the example above, each button is set to add rows to the RSVP table, and we're using the =User() formula to capture the person's details:



Mark all tasks complete

To accomplish this, we're modifying rows:

Buttons that push buttons

One of the actions a button can take is pushing another button (or buttons!). This is helpful when you want to take multiple actions at once. In the example below, we're using one button to push multiple "Add Tasks" button to add three tasks in one click.

Screen Recording 2021-08-06 at 04.15.05 PM

Curious as to how the above setup works? Check out this video!

Buttons FAQs

Can I see all the buttons in my doc?

Yes! If you want to see all of your buttons, go to the Doc Map.

You can get there via Explore > Settings > Doc Map:

Can I notify a person with a button?

Yes! You'll choose the Notify action from the Action dropdown menu. 

You can also connect your doc to apps like Slack or GMail, and use buttons to send messages, email meeting notes, or even automate reminders for your team!

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