Database properties

#Properties

Relations, rollups and formulas are described under Properties, formulas and rollups.

#Collapsing properties in a record

Below a record's title, the Properties arrow folds the properties into one line: the two or three most relevant values as small chips (status first, then selects, dates and people) and “+4 properties”. A tap on the line opens it again. The record's content moves up – especially useful on a phone.

• The choice applies to all records of the database and is stored in your account, separately for phone and computer: collapsing on the phone leaves everything visible on the computer.
• Without a choice of your own, properties are expanded on a computer; on a phone they are collapsed as soon as the record shows more than four properties. A record you have just created always opens expanded so you can fill it in.
• Collapsing changes no values and no permissions and only applies to you. Printing and exports always show all properties – unless you turn them off in the print options.
• Ordinary pages have the same in the bar with tags and properties.

#Option colours New

Every option of a select or multi-select can have its own colour – grey, blue, green, red, yellow, orange, purple, pink or teal, the same colours as tags. The colour shows wherever the value appears: table, board columns, list, gallery, feed, groups, filters, in the record, in forms (multi-selects) and on published pages.

• Changing it: in the property's settings (click the column header), every option is listed as a chip below the options – click one to pick its colour. Faster, on the value itself: right-click a chip in the table or the header of a board column and choose a colour. It is saved at once; Undo in the notice brings the old colour back.
• New options get the next colour in turn by themselves – whether you type them in the settings, add a board column or they come in through an import, the API or AI. A renamed option keeps its colour.
• Assign colours automatically colours all options of the property in turn at once (replacing the colours set so far). Undo next to it or closing without saving discards it, Save keeps it.
• Existing databases look as before until you set colours: options without a colour are grey, only a few fixed words such as “Done” or “High” are coloured.
• Import: Notion's HTML export brings the options' colours along (Notion's brown becomes orange, “default” grey), as does AFFiNE; CSV, Markdown, Jira and Trello get colours in turn. When records are moved or copied to another database, new options take their colour along. The CSV export has no colours.
• API and MCP: database.update accepts and returns optionColors, e.g. {"Open": "blue"}. Without optionColors the stored colours stay; {} removes them.
• A multi-select with the workspace's tags (below) shows the tags' colours.

#Formatted text

Text properties – all except the title – can contain bold, italic, strikethrough, code, links and line breaks. These are marks within the text only, no blocks: headings, lists, quotes or tables are not available there (that is what the record's own text is for). There is no underline.

• Editing: click the cell in the table, or the field in the record. When text is selected, a small bar with bold, italic, strikethrough, code and link appears above it.
• Shortcuts: ⌘B bold, ⌘I italic, ⌘⇧X strikethrough, ⌘E code, ⌘K links the selected text (without a selection ⌘K opens the quick search as everywhere). Links only go to http, https and mailto; example.com becomes https://example.com, an e-mail address a mailto: link. An empty field removes the link.
• Line break: ⇧Enter. In a table cell Enter ends editing and saves, Esc discards it. In the record, in the feed and when editing through a share link, Enter also makes a line break; the value is saved when you leave the field.
• Display: formatted in table, board, gallery, list, feed, the record, published pages and embedded views. In table cells and on cards a line break shows as a space (the row stays one line), in the record and the feed as a break. Links open in a new tab; on cards that are links themselves they stay text.
• As plain text the value counts for search, filters (contains …), sorting, grouping, formulas (prop("Note") returns the text without formatting), copying to the clipboard, the CSV export, the apps' widgets and placeholders in templates and automations.
• Pasting from Word, Google Docs or web pages keeps bold, italic, strikethrough, code and links; headings become bold, paragraphs and list items line breaks, images and tables are left out.
• Import and export: CSV (including Notion exports), Jira and Trello, vCards, LDAP and form answers are plain text – asterisks and underscores stay as written. Tables from AFFiNE and tables from documents (Turn into database) keep their formatting. The Markdown export writes the formatting as Markdown, the CSV export plain text. Older content archives come in as plain text.
• Existing values from before this feature look as they did: *asterisks* keep their asterisks.
• Changing the type: when another property becomes text, its values stay as written; when text becomes another type, the text without formatting counts.
• API and MCP: the value is a string with inline Markdown: **bold**, _italic_ (or *italic*), ~~strikethrough~~, `code`, [label](https://…) and \n for a line break. A backslash keeps \ * _ ~ ` [ ] as characters – so send plain text escaped. Links with other schemes (such as javascript:) show only their label; # or - at the start stay text. The title is plain text.

#Multi-select with the workspace tags

Instead of its own list, a multi-select can have the workspace's tags as its options – the same tags pages carry. In the property's settings (click the column header), under Options, choose between Own list and Workspace tags.

• The property offers the tags that apply in the database's space – those of the whole workspace and those of the space (see scope) –, with their colours and in their order; a new tag from a record belongs to the database's space; cells, board columns and cards show the tag colours. In a record you pick with + Tag as on pages: typing suggests matching tags, Enter takes one.
• A value that is not a tag yet creates the tag – as on pages, members with edit rights may do that. Readers, guests and read tokens only pick existing tags. On a board, + Group creates a new tag for such a property.
• It stays a multi-select: filters, sorting, grouping, board columns, formulas, automations, import and export (Markdown, CSV, Git), API and MCP work as usual. The tag names are stored.
• Renaming, merging and deleting a tag (Settings → Tags & properties) changes every record with that tag as well: a renamed tag shows under its new name, merging turns the one tag into the other (without duplicates), a deleted tag disappears from the records. Filters and board columns of views follow; Flowplan first keeps a version of every database affected in its version history.
• Records with tags appear in the tag view next to the pages and are found with #tag / -#tag in the search.
• Switching an existing multi-select to the tags: its options are matched to tags (ignoring case), missing tags are created; the records keep their values, now with the tag's exact name. Back to “Own list”, the tags become its own options – the ones in use first, at most 100; the values stay. The options keep the tags' colours.
• Guests only see the tags used in the records shared with them as options and create none. Through share links a record only offers its own tags.
• In encrypted spaces the option does not exist (like tags on pages).