Troubleshooting memory issues

If your doc crashes, follow these steps

Updated over a week ago

This article is relevant to issues with Memory Performance. If you are unsure if this applies to your doc, refer to the article on Improving Performance.

Memory performance issues show up when your document is too big to be loaded on your device. We typically observe this when docs are in the tens of thousands of rows. The most common indicator is when your doc no longer opens on Mobile. When you try to load your doc, you might see an error like this:

Hopefully, you never see this error; but, if you do, there’s only a small likelihood it’s related to memory performance. If your doc does not have a significant number of large image files in it, the cause is likely something else. However, if you are seeing an error like the one above, please contact our support team (via the ? in the bottom corner of your doc) so we can help.

If your doc’s size is causing memory issues, the main thing you can do is reduce the amount of data in it. Here are some tips on the ways you can go about doing it:

  1. Switch from images to image URL: If you have lots of large images in your doc or an image column in your tables, it might help to switch to using Image URL instead.

  2. Split up your doc: You may have a doc that contains a lot of data but that data isn't necessarily dependent on each other. It is a great idea in those cases to split up your doc into smaller docs focused on each individual use case. This can also help your team focus on work relevant to each use case.

  3. Archive or delete stale data: If you have big tables containing data that is no longer needed (e.g. from last year), you can delete or archive those rows to another doc. See this article for more tips.

  4. Use Automations: Rather than deleting rows manually, you can use an Automation to delete old rows. For example, you can set up an Automation that runs once every night and deletes all rows older than 6 months.

  5. Reduce row count where you can: Try filtering tables to smaller volumes or deleting/migrating old data that isn't needed (such as old tasks). Automation could also help here!

  6. Use the Coda API/Zapier: At times, you may need to also reference the old data in your doc so having it in archive docs may not be good enough. However, in those cases, you could make use of the Coda API or Zapier to share relevant data between related Coda docs, rather than having everything in one doc.

  7. Reduce grouping if possible, especially multiple nested groups: They don't take up as much space as buttons in tables, but this adds up if used excessively.

  8. Hide all columns that aren't needed: You can still make all the columns visible when you expand the row (see this video for more details).

  9. Keep sections to as small of an amount of views/tables as possible, splitting one section across 2 can help.


Explore Ben Lee’s doc on building best practices for additional tips, and contact our support team with any questions.

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