Creating Tool-Tip Pop-Ups

This doc shows outlines how to create pop-ups, that overcome the limitation of direct cell referencing.

Nina Kastenauer

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The insights herein were derived from Paul D’s post:

Paul from the Coda Community on Twitter⁠

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Now, you might say: “Why would I go through the trouble of creating an Object Formula for a pop-up? When I could simply reference a row, by typing @row, and voilá, a pop-up appears.

You’d be right, because that does work, of course.

But there are situation where it might be worth your time to set the references up differently. Let’s compare the differences between the two approaches:

Hover Pop-Up with Direct Cell Referencing

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@Atlantic Ocean⁠

Limitation No. 1: BaseTable Layout

Direct Cell referencing will always display the visible columns of the base table. You can’t directly reference the cell of a view. Hence, you’re source table’s layout will have to show all the columns (and only the columns) which shall be displayed upon hover. As the column “Image” is set to hidden in the base table, it does not show in the pop-up above.

Limitation No. 2: “@”-Symbol

Direct Cell referencing will display the “@”-Symbol. Now, you could of course get rid of it in a number of ways (easiest approach would be to use totext()). That, however, also removes the referencing itself. See for yourself, no hover possible here:

Atlantic Ocean

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Limitation No. 3: Multiple Rows

What if you’d like the pop-up upon hover to display the information of multiple rows? Well, that won’t fly with Direct Cell Referencing (it’s sort of implied in the name, isn’t it ;-)

Hover Pop-Up with Object Canvas Formula

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Atlantic Ocean

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Limitation No. 1 - no longer a limitation

Within the formula, you decide which parameters to show upon hover (regardless of whether these are visible or hidden in the source table. You can even choose to show or hide the parameter names (ie column headers).

Limitation No. 2 - no longer a limitation

It’s a named Canvas Formula, so you’re free to give it any name you’d like.

Limitation No. 3 - no longer a limitation

You can merge several rows into one pop-up, more on how this is achieved here

Combine Several Rows into a single Pop-Up⁠

Added bonus feature: Several data sources

With the object canvas formula, you are free to combine several different data sources! Maybe you’d like you’re pop-up to show the image from your main Coda page, alongside a column from Table 1, next to a column from Table 2. That’s possible with the Object canvas formula. Read on below how it’s done.

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Let’s get started:

On the Canvas - Object Formula⁠

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