FAQ

Frequently asked questions about notebooks. For details, see the page for each feature.

A notebook feels slow

If a notebook is slow to load, or edits take a while to appear, the notebook or page might be too large.

Units of loading and rendering

Notebook processing works in the following units.

Process	Unit	Description
Loading	Notebook	When you open a notebook, the contents of all pages are loaded
Collaborative editing sync	Notebook	The entire notebook is synced together
Rendering	Page	Only the open page is rendered

Switching pages doesn't reload the notebook; it only re-renders the page. If you reference an SQL block on another page, changing that other page can also trigger a re-render.

Checking the current size

You can check the notebook size in Size after opening About this notebook in the header inside the notebook.

When the notebook size exceeds 1MB, a warning appears at the bottom of the screen. When it exceeds 10MB, editing is disabled. Even if the notebook hasn't reached the 10MB size limit, larger notebooks affect performance, so consider splitting around 1MB.

Narrowing down the cause from symptoms

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
Opening the notebook is slow	The whole notebook is large	When the whole notebook is slow
Editing or interaction feels slow Switching pages is slow	That page has a lot of content	When only a specific page is slow

Opening a notebook includes both loading the whole notebook and rendering the page. If it's still slow after you switch to a lighter page, the whole notebook is likely the cause. If it's slow only on a specific page, that page is likely the cause.

When the whole notebook is slow

Because the whole notebook is loaded and synced, adding pages and blocks makes opening and collaborative editing slower. References between SQL blocks and parameters are also calculated across the whole notebook.

Instead of keeping adding pages to one notebook, split notebooks by analysis theme or use case. (Consider splitting around about 10 pages per notebook.)

To split an existing notebook, follow these steps.

1. Export the notebook you want to split.
2. For each destination notebook, select the pages to include and import them as a new notebook.
3. If you keep the original notebook, delete the pages you've already moved.

See Export and import for the steps.

When you split notebooks, you might end up writing the same SQL in multiple notebooks. Save shared SQL as a saved query and reference it from each notebook.

TIP

A notebook keeps internal data for collaborative editing. Codatum cleans up unused data automatically, but it doesn't remove all of it. As a result, repeated editing can make the notebook larger than its visible content. If you export the notebook and import it as a new notebook, that internal data isn't carried over, so the size can become smaller without changing the content.

When only a specific page is slow

Opening a page renders all blocks and charts on that page. The more blocks and charts you place on one page, the longer display and editing can take.

In this case, add a page and split the content. Pages that aren't open aren't rendered, so you can reduce the amount of rendering per page. Within the same notebook, you can reference an SQL block on another page, so you can keep SQL references when you split pages.

A notebook can't be edited because it exceeds the size limit

You can't edit a notebook when its size exceeds 10MB. See Limits.

You can still export a notebook you can't edit. Import only the pages you need into a new notebook to continue editing. See Export and import for the steps.

Column names aren't suggested in a SQL block

Column name suggestions are available only when you use a table reference or a reference to another SQL block. Suggestions aren't available when you write a table ID as a string, or when you reference a saved query.

See SQL block for details.