Computed Columns

Transform basic data in powerful new ways.

The Data Editor is where you edit the data in your Glide Table or external Data Source. It's also where you can add powerful Computed Columns that enhance your app's data.

This guide gives you an overview of the six most commonly used types and directs you to more in-depth documentation on each of them.

Relation Column

After making a few Lists and Screens in Glide, many people realize that they need to create relationships between things. For example:

  • Allow tasks to belong in apps

  • Show employees inside of departments

  • Put inventory items into categories

  • Or map rooms belong inside of buildings

Databases like Airtable allow us to create relationships like this, but normal spreadsheets don't.

Wherever your data is stored, you can use the Relation Column to create relationships and then use those relationships in lots of different ways.

Lookup Column

The Lookup Column uses a Relation to look through and bring back the values from a single column. For example:

  • Retrieve the phone number of a team member's manager

  • Show the app name that the current task belongs to

  • Lookup the category ID for the current item

  • Get the address of the customer assigned to this order

Template Column

The Template Column lets you display dynamic text from data found in other columns. For example, you could write ‘Welcome NAME, today is DAY' and replace NAME with the User's name and DAY with the current day.

Rollup Column

The Rollup Column helps you to perform a calculation on an entire column or even a Relation. The most basic computation for the Rollup is Count, but depending on what data you're working with, you can also do things like: Count Unique, Sum, Average, Range, Max/Min, Earliest, Lates, Count True, All True, and much more.

Math Column

The Math Column performs instant calculations on the data in your table—from basic arithmetic functions to more complex ones. You can then use these formulas in different Components in your app and see the output instantly.

If → Then → Else Column

The If → Then → Else Column produces new values based on a set of conditions. For example:

  • If the user's age is greater than 18, output the value Of Age

  • If the Task Relation column is empty, output the value No Tasks

  • If the Due Date is before today, output the value Overdue

  • If the user's score is greater than 60%, output the value Pass

Have a question about Computed Columns? Ask the Glide community.

Updated more than a week ago
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