I have a single select field in an interface that allows users to enter new values if what they need isn’t already on the list. This will grow over time and it would be a lot more useful if it was in alphabetical order, but I don’t want to have to go into the field properties every day and click the alphabetize button. Is there any way to automate this?
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Is there a way to automatically alphabetize a single-select field when users add new options?
+6Best answer by ScottWorld
You can’t automatically alphabetize a single-select field, but if you change that field to a linked record field, you can automatically alphabetize the choices in a linked record field.
Airtable’s linked record field will automatically sort the records based on the very first view (i.e. the topmost view) in the linked table, so you would need to lock the view after sorting it, to make sure that nobody else changes the sort order.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
+35You can’t automatically alphabetize a single-select field, but if you change that field to a linked record field, you can automatically alphabetize the choices in a linked record field.
Airtable’s linked record field will automatically sort the records based on the very first view (i.e. the topmost view) in the linked table, so you would need to lock the view after sorting it, to make sure that nobody else changes the sort order.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
+28Hey
As Scott mentioned, there is no way to natively get this done on Airtable.
I can think of crazy workarounds which could achieve that using third party tools and API calls to Airtable, but honestly they are absolutely not worth pursuing probably.
I would highly suggest you move forward with Scott’s suggestion on using Linked records rather than single select.
If you need any help setting this up, please feel free to reach out!
Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation
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