Changing Column Type

Say you created the Staff table including the Staff E-mail column and chose the E-mail Address type for this column. Then you understood that all your Staff is TeamDesk users. So, you want to change the Staff E-mail column type from the E-mail Address type to the User type.

Along with editing column properties, it is possible to change the type of a created column. Such necessity may appear, for example, when the format of data entry is changed for a specific column needs, therefore the "old" column type does not correspond to user needs.

To change a column type:

Click the Setup link at the top right corner of the window.

Select a table you need.

From the setup menu select Columns > Customize existing columns. The system will display the Columns form.

On the Columns form click a necessary column name and the Column Properties Form will be displayed.

Click the Change Type button; on the displayed form select a new value of column type from the drop-down list:

Click the Save button to save a new column type.

The TeamDesk system tries to perform the procedure of converting where possible. However, not all types of columns can be converted without data loss (for example, you can convert a formula-defined type only into a column of a corresponding type: Formula-User into User.At the same time, you cannot convert a column of a simple type into a formula-defined type without data loss).

You cannot change the column type for system columns (columns present in the table by default), key columns or columns taking part in the relations between tables.

See the table below to learn more about possible converting types (note that the Text value is related to columns of the Text, Text Multiline, E-Mail, URL, Phone and Attachment types):

+ - converting is possible

? - converting depends on the value of a column (for example, the text column type can be successfully converted to the number column type in case all records in the table contain only numeric values in the column of the text type).