A strategic approach to transposition
Update — February 2026: I Changed My Mind
If you’ve followed my writing on Coda, you know I hold strong opinions about data architecture. One of them shaped the original design of this pack: the conviction that wide, column-heavy sync tables are the wrong way to work with form data in Coda. Every question its own column — 40 questions becomes a 40-column table. That’s importing a spreadsheet mindset into a tool built for something better.
So I deliberately went the other way. One row per submission, questions and answers stored as lists, with a button to transpose into a proper relational structure.
Here’s what happened: I kept hearing from users saying the same thing — I get it, but I just need to see the submission in one row. At some point you have to ask whether you’re building for your principles or for the people using the pack.
The pack now includes a standard one-row-per-submission sync option. If you want to go further — transposing into a relational structure, building linked tables, handling attachments properly — all of that is still there. You choose what fits your project.
