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  1. Formula Field

Comment #⁨19⁩

K Katherine Meerburg Apr 19, 2026
Posted Sun, Apr 19, 2026 4:03 AM
Edited Sun, Apr 19, 2026 4:26 AM
In reply to Julien France Julien France

It looks like Tana does support more than simple fixed values via the "formula" method @Julien France pointed out; I did a bit more poking and was able to get some more out of it:

https://ktemk.in/post/tana-formulae/

Things formulas can do, from what I'm looking at, while live updating:

  • Use field values given anything you can craft a search query for (using e.g findInstance, filter, and lookup)
  • Use field values for a particular field in parent/child nodes
  • Use field values on any node that is used itself as a field value
  • Basic math (add, subtract, multiply, divide, average, min, max, count, rounding) on node contents / field values
  • Filter out duplicate references
  • Parse and format dates, to a degree
  • Get the first and last N items returned by a search
  • Combine disparate searches
  • Move up and down the parent/child tree
  • Count the length of a string or the number of emojis in it (???)

... and that's about it. There doesn't seem to be a way to get a substring, or choose based on conditions, or anything like that.

edit: now, if there was the ability to specify an arbitrary javascript function to run instead of these preselected few, that would be 🔥