When using text columns in your tables, you have the option to validate inputs. Using validation that supports regular expressions, you can validate cell values and highlight cells with content that deviates from the valid format.
Note
Basically, there are two different ways to validate entries in text columns. Validation can be performed both when adding a new text column and afterwards for text columns that have already been created.
Validate inputs
- If you want to validate the entries in an already created text column, first click on the triangle icon of the corresponding column.
- Select Customize Column Type from the drop-down menu.
- Activate the Validate input slider
- Define a target format.
- Confirm with Submit.
Consequence of validation
After successful validation, the cells with content different from the target format will be highlighted in red.
Regular expressions
SeaTable supports regular expressions for validating your entries in text columns.
You can find some examples in the following table:
| Regular expression | Function | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [123456] | Check whether an input corresponds to a school grade from 1 to 6. | ||||
| [1-9][0-9]?[0-9]?[a-z]? | Check format of a German house number (3 digits + 1 letter) | ||||
| [0-9]{5} | Checking the format of German postal codes (5x a number between 0 and 9) | ||||
| [0-9/. \-]+ | Checking the format of a phone number | ||||
| Max.*Mustermann | Search for a possible middle name of an author |
Tip
A detailed tutorial for using regular expressions to check strings can be found here (German) and here (English).
