Free text
A field in which a person can type anything, such as a notes or comments box, with no fixed list of choices and no required format.
Free text keeps detail that a fixed list would discard, and it cannot be counted or grouped until that detail is extracted. When the same few answers keep appearing, the field wanted to be a coded one.
Where it comes up
- Free text in a coded fieldA column meant to hold one of a few fixed values also holds comments, explanations, and whole sentences.
- Multiple values in one cellA single cell holds a list, or two different facts, joined by a comma, slash, or line break.
- Line breaks inside cellsA cell contains a line break, so one record can spill across several lines of the file.
See also
- Controlled vocabularyA fixed, agreed list of the values a field is allowed to hold, such as the two-letter codes for US states.
- StringA value stored as a sequence of characters, which is to say text. The characters 2025 held as a string are four symbols, not a number.
- Categorical dataValues that place each row in one of a limited set of groups, such as a status of open, pending, or closed. The values are labels, not quantities.