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Insert a third column into an existing entity in an ERD in Lucidchart

Related products:Lucidchart

Dave101

Hi

I started out playing with an ERD in Lucid Chart and the initial entities had two columns. I now want to amend my existing entities in the diagram to add a third column.

At the moment I have this

but really want to convert the existing items to have the third column like this:

Is there a way that I can do this without starting from scratch on each entity ?

Cheers

Dave

Pinned reply

April 16, 2024

Hi everyone! I’m a product manager at Lucid and am grateful for all of your feedback in this thread. We do now have a “Change Shape” option available that will allow you to increase the column count up to 3 freely without losing your existing entries — see GIF below for a 2 > 3 example. We welcome feedback and would love to hear how it works for you!

 

Cheers,

Chloe

 

Comments

Eric R
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  • Lucid support team
  • 343 replies
  • June 4, 2021

Hi Dave thanks for posting in the Lucidchart Community. While it is possible to add new rows to an ERD table it is unfortunately currently not possible to add a new column. However we're always looking for ways to improve Lucidchart and your feedback is the best way for us to do that. Would you mind adding your idea to our feature request form? Ideas submitted to this form are passed on to the product development team for their consideration.

Thanks for your request and I apologize for any inconvenience this causes you.

For more information on how ERDs in Lucidchart work please take a look at the Entity Relationship Diagrams article in our Help Center. 


Giselle M

I had this same problem... now on to start again from scratch T.T 


Ashley C
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  • Lucid support team
  • 152 replies
  • March 21, 2022

Hi Giselle

Thanks for adding your thoughts to this thread. It is not currently possible to add new columns to an ERD. Would you mind sharing your feedback with our Product Developers using this form?

Thanks for taking the time. Let us know if you have any questions.


Heloisa D

I have the same problem. I will need to convert my logical data model to a physical data model in order to do that I will need to start from scratch. 

Come on you should have something like that! 


Leianne C
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  • Lucid support team
  • 1108 replies
  • July 4, 2022

Hi @heloisa d thanks for continuing this thread and sharing your use case. If the feature to add columns to an ERD is something you'd like tos see please submit your feedback using the feature request form. The more requests we receive the more likely this is to be prioritized by our Product Development team. Thank you!


Blake R101

it is over a year later sense the og post   I could really use that feature right now I probably will not to return to this forum page to see replies so i will simply say i would like that feature added 


Coumba D
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  • Lucid support team
  • 350 replies
  • October 5, 2022

Hello Blake

Thanks for participating in the conversation. The best way to make your voice heard is to fill in our feature request form.

What you submit in that person is passed on directly to the team in charge. Thank you!


Ronald R102

At some point people aren't going to bother with the feature request form because 18 months later they're getting the same response and the feature is still not implemented. Is this feature even on the roadmap? Why is this being like a feature instead of default behavior?


Addie
Lucid Legend Level 8
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  • Lucid Legend Level 8
  • 607 replies
  • November 16, 2022

Hi Ronald

Thank you for posting your feedback in the Lucid Community. This is absolutely a valid concern - and we apologize for the inconvenience you're experiencing. Even though it may take some time our engineers are hard at work adding new features building new products and fixing critical bugs. Sometimes that means that features like this aren't implemented quite as soon as we'd like. The best way to boost this feature request and show a need for it to our development team is to submit the feature request form. We don't know whether it's on the immediate or long-term road map but we will follow up in the thread as soon as we hear it's been implemented.

For more information on what happens after you submit a feature request please check out this Community post addressing the question: What Happens to My Feedback?


Ziyan P
  • 1 reply
  • March 24, 2023

Here for a reminder in 2023. A small bug like that can really spoil something that's beautiful. I could've saved time only if the approach was consumer centric and not formality based.


Rasib A
  • 1 reply
  • April 18, 2023

Still no solution for this - great :)


Addie
Lucid Legend Level 8
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  • Lucid Legend Level 8
  • 607 replies
  • April 18, 2023

Hi Rasib 

Thanks for posting your feedback in the Community. Our apologies for the inconvenience - we do hear and appreciate your feedback and have passed it on to the development team. We'll comment in this thread if there are any new developments or updates!


Richard P101

I'm seeing a 3 column entity option in Lucid Chart.  Hope this helps.



Addie
Lucid Legend Level 8
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  • Lucid Legend Level 8
  • 607 replies
  • May 15, 2023

Thanks for adding that option to the thread @Richard P! In case it's helpful to anyone to know you can select up to three columns when creating a new ERD but you can not change the column amount after the ERD has been created.

We appreciate your feedback so please let us know if you have any additional thoughts or questions! 


Christian M102

2 years later still no ability to update an existing ERD. Extremely frustrating to update large ERD diagrams. Feels like you do not care about user requests if you respond to multiple requests for the same feature with no action behind it.


Addie
Lucid Legend Level 8
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  • Lucid Legend Level 8
  • 607 replies
  • May 16, 2023

Hi Christian 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. We understand your frustration and apologize for the inconvenience that this feature hasn't been implemented as quickly as you'd like. Our developers are always working on prioritizing new features critical bugs and improvements to our products - and sometimes this means that some features aren't implemented as quickly as we'd like. If you'd like to learn more about the feedback process please check out this Community post: What Happens to My Feedback?

We appreciate your patience and always welcome your feedback as to how we can improve!


Daniel W102

I have used the feature request form to suggest this feature (adding column to existing ERD table).  Adding a key or type column would be great in order to avoid having to re-create the tables and their relationships.


Whittney C
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  • Lucidite
  • 181 replies
  • June 14, 2023

Hi Daniel thanks for adding to this thread! We have heard you and passed on your helpful feedback to the team. Thanks for sharing with us! Have a great rest of your day! 

 


Daniel W102

To update here I was able to successfully "add" columns to ERD shape types (from 1 to 3 columns and from 2 to 3 columns) while retaining the existing values by changing using the Entity "Change Shape" selector.  Grateful that this appears to work!

Is this an upgrade (in the past 30 days no less!) from the prior comment by Addie H that "you can not change the column amount after the ERD has been created"?  (Or does my stage of drawing as in the screenshot below the diagram not constitute "creating an ERD"?). In either case I am a happy camper with the state of this feature at the present time.  Thanks for listening to the feedback because AFAICT at present it looks like this feature may have been added.


Whittney C
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  • Lucidite
  • 181 replies
  • June 14, 2023

Hi Daniel! This is great news! We do indeed pass on all the feedback we collect in our community. We try our best to update when there are product changes but it looks like we missed this one. Thanks for this information! 


Micah
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  • Lucid community team
  • 2345 replies
  • March 25, 2024
The following idea has been merged into this idea:
https://community.lucid.co/ideas/erd-diagramming-help-4324
All the votes have been transferred into this idea.

Micah
Forum|alt.badge.img+20
  • Lucid community team
  • 2345 replies
  • March 25, 2024
The following idea has been merged into this idea:

All the votes have been transferred into this idea.

Micah
Forum|alt.badge.img+20
  • Lucid community team
  • 2345 replies
  • March 25, 2024
The following idea has been merged into this idea:
https://community.lucid.co/ideas/erd-how-to-add-a-column-the-entity-shape-50
All the votes have been transferred into this idea.

Forum|alt.badge.img+3
  • Lucid product team
  • 28 replies
  • April 16, 2024

Hi everyone! I’m a product manager at Lucid and am grateful for all of your feedback in this thread. We do now have a “Change Shape” option available that will allow you to increase the column count up to 3 freely without losing your existing entries — see GIF below for a 2 > 3 example. We welcome feedback and would love to hear how it works for you!

 

Cheers,

Chloe

 


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • 1 reply
  • September 11, 2024

I haven’t used LucidChart in over a year, but came across this problem where I want to add a null column to the ERD. I selected the three-column option. it moved my existing fields to the right and added the third to the left as a “KEY” column. Is there a project underway to add annotative columns to an ERD? 

Also, I see circular relationships in these tickets, where it says above that this was merge into another ticket, then I go to that ticket to find it has been merged into this one. 


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