Categorical Columns
A categorical column restricts its cells to a set of labels you define — statuses, regions, priorities. Instead of typing Active and hoping everyone else spells it the same way, the column holds the list and people pick from it.
Single and multiple
A categorical column can be either:
- Single-select — one label per cell.
- Multi-select — several labels per cell.
Cells render as coloured chips. Where several labels do not fit the cell width, the extras collapse into a +N badge you can open.
Defining the categories
Each category has a label and optionally a colour. You can add, rename, recolour, reorder and remove them from the column.
Three things behave in a way worth knowing:
Removing a category is blocked while a filter uses it. If any view filters on that value, the removal is refused rather than silently emptying the filter. Clear the filter first.
Category edits are not undoable. Adding, renaming and removing categories sit outside undo and redo. Renaming a category affects every cell holding it at once, and an undo that silently reverted a rename across a whole table is worse than doing it again deliberately.
Concurrent edits are caught. If someone else changed the category set while you were editing it, your change is rejected rather than applied over theirs — which would empty cells pointing at categories that no longer mean what they did.
Filtering
A categorical column offers its values in a picker rather than a free-text box, so you filter on what the column can actually hold.
For a multi-select column, a filter tests membership — "the value occurs in the list" — so a cell tagged EU, Priority matches a filter for EU.
Casting
Categorical is one of the two locked types. The only conversion offered is to a List, which keeps what the cell meant: the labels become list values.
Casting to text or anything else is not offered. See column types.