Default column widths on embedded reports obscuring data

We're building a new app with the "new" form builder for the first time, and seeing an issue with embedded reports. The default column width on the embedded table reports is partially obscuring the data, and although you can manually expand each column, there doesn't seem to be a way to make those column widths stick.

Am I missing something, or is this a deficiency of the new form UI? We have half a dozen apps using the legacy UI with dozens and dozens of embedded tables, and this has never been a problem.

Fwiw, I found the following post describing the same problem on dashboard pages, but this is not a dashboard page. It's happening on the 'main form' within our tables... https://community.quickbase.com/discussions/quickbase-discussions/can-you-set-column-widths-for-reports-in-the-new-dashboard-pages/19595

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Forms

MarkShnier__You
7 days ago
This is a known problem which at EMPOWER they indicated in the Keynote by Harrison that they were putting their best engineers on. The problem seems worse when the number is formatted with a $ sign or as a %. So you can try removing the $ formatting or have a mirror formula field which is used on that report as a plain number which does not have the $ format.
The other trick that sometimes works is to override the column heading like this with underscores
_My_Column_Heading_Words___
Because there are no spaces Quickbase may not wrap that column Heading, and hence it will preserve the width as wide as the adjusted label. But typically you will know the magnitude of the typical numbers in the column so you know how wide the column needs to be even though it won't be dynamic.
Please post back with how these work-a-rounds worked.

JoshWeeman
Qrew Assistant Captain
7 days ago
Thanks for the suggestions, Mark. As you can see from this screenshot, treating the values as simple non-formatted numbers did not help in our case, but the underscores_in_column_name workaround does indeed work. Many thanks for that. (I had tried padding the column names with spaces and hyphens, but neither of those work as you know.)

Great to have a workaround for now, but WOW, that's astonishing that it's been 2 years since the new form builder UI rolled out and this has been broken the entire time. The improvements to the new form builder are welcomed, but embedded tables are far too fundamental of a UI element to have made it to launch in such a non-readable state. Good to hear a solution is in the works.

Thanks again, this crutch will get us by until QB resolves the issue.
- MarkShnier__You
  Qrew Legend
  7 days ago
  _Great_thx_for letting _us_know_that_Underscores _are_a_work_a_round_for now.
MarkShnier__You
Qrew Legend
7 days ago
This is a known problem which at EMPOWER they indicated in the Keynote by Harrison that they were putting their best engineers on. The problem seems worse when the number is formatted with a $ sign or as a %. So you can try removing the $ formatting or have a mirror formula field which is used on that report as a plain number which does not have the $ format.
The other trick that sometimes works is to override the column heading like this with underscores
_My_Column_Heading_Words___
Because there are no spaces Quickbase may not wrap that column Heading, and hence it will preserve the width as wide as the adjusted label. But typically you will know the magnitude of the typical numbers in the column so you know how wide the column needs to be even though it won't be dynamic.
Please post back with how these work-a-rounds worked.
MarkShnier
Qrew Cadet
7 days ago
.

Forum Discussion

Default column widths on embedded reports obscuring data