Long Text Without Formatting Mode (like source view mode or raw text mode)

[Rene]

Hey!

Currently I’m working with longer HTML and other script snippets to do some scraping and ChatGPT stuff.

Now I use the Long Text field because I need to see the whole text snippets visually which is a pain with the (short) text fields because of its size.

Unfortunately, the Long Text field does some formatting, which I do not need in this case. I just want to see end edit the content in raw text or in “source view” like some other web text editor supports.

So really helpful would be:

• The ability to switch the Long Text column to a “no formatting mode” or
• a mutiline text field as Column type, without any formatting that can be edited in a popup with a larger editor (like the Long Text)

Is this currently possible and I don’t get it how to do that?
I’m asking because I found another topic that requests the same:

Format plain text with line breaks

Hi, I would like to be able to add line breaks in “Text” columns. Is that possible? If not, is there a way to toggle plain text editing in long text columns without having to enclose the text in backticks? I would like to be able to see and edit the actual source text (i.e. the actual data that gets exported when retrieving the row data through the API). Edit: the ‘code block’ solution does not work on uploaded data, by the way. When I upload data that has the value right atri\w*[^.]*?\b(ente…

In that topic, someone with a SeaTable Badge states a Feature Request has been added for this request, but I cannot find it in the list of feature requests here:
https://ideas.seatable.io/

So has this feature already be implemented? Or should I add a new feature request?

[cdb]

The topic you’re referring to is from 2021. At this time https://ideas.seatable.io did not exist. Therefore, I would recommend that you create a new issue at ideas.seatable.io.

[Rene]

Ok, done: SeaTable Feature Requests Board

[daniel.pan]

Actually this can be easily solved by putting your text in a code element of Long Text field. (Just add a new line of “```” in the beginning of your text and end of your text)

The long text field using Markdown format. By putting text in a code element, you can preserve the original content.

[Rene]

Hey Daniel,

thanks for the workaround. It is not a perfect solution, since you need to change a cell value only to see its raw content. But it works for now.

In case someone struggles with the backticks like me:
You need to three backticks at the start and the end separated with a space like this:

result = "``` " + the_content + " ```"
base.update_row(context.current_table, context.current_row['_id'], { 'Content': result })

Otherwise the_content gets lost.