Linking to another record

​@cubsfan100 

Welcome to Airtable... from one Cubs fan to another!! 😃

You would not need Javascript for something like this. (In fact, you will almost never need Javascript when working with Airtable.)

But unfortunately, you didn’t give enough details so that I can properly answer your question.

Here are a few questions that I have:

• What do your 2 tables represent? And why are there 2 separate tables?
• Do you already have data in Airtable and you’re trying to normalize your data? Or are you trying to set it up so that you can enter data in the future?
• Please explain exactly what you are hoping to accomplish.

Also, since you are brand new to Airtable, you might gain some valuable insights by taking my free Airtable training course, which you can take for free by signing up for a free 30-day trial with LinkedIn Learning.

Note that the course is extremely outdated because it was created many years ago using one of the very earliest versions of Airtable. It was created before automations even existed, and it was created years before interfaces existed!

However, I discuss linked records in depth, and all of the core concepts of building a base remain the same to this day — such as working with linked record fields, working with lookup fields, and how to properly structure your base.

Hope this helps!

If you have a budget and you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Two approaches to this depending on what you’re looking for…

Most common: If you want the target table to display updated information from the source table, you can use lookup fields. So as long as the records are linked between the tables, just add lookup fields for whatever columns you want in the target table. 

Less common: If for some reason you don’t want the target table information to update but have information copied over from source at a point in time, you can pretty easily set up an automation to do this. Just use an Automation triggered on when linked record isn’t empty, and then update the record in the target table record using information from the source table record. This won’t update record information in target when source changes (it’s not synced so to speak) but occasionally I could imagine a utility like this. 

Hello.

I hope sufficient information was provided. 

For this example, I created two tables: “Students” and “Student Grades;” The first column in both tables is “ID” and they are numbered 1-5..I deleted other fields in new table but kept and hide Attachments and Attachment Summary because of “dependency.”

On the Student Grades table, I created a “Grades” field and added random letter grades.On the Student, to add a new field, I selected “Link to another record.,” selected the Student Grades table and and added “Grades” for the field name, clicked “Create field” and selected “Grades” as the “lookup field.” 

Students table now has the following fields “ID” “Grades” “Grades (from Grades” and Student Grades table fields are “ID” and “Grades” 

On Students table I can click on the + in the first record (with ID 1) and a box of appears I can select the first record and this add the following:

ID    Grades     Grades (from Grades)

1         1                        A

My questions is: instead of clicking on the + for each subsequent “cell” in the “Grades” field on the Students table to add the grades, how can this process be automated or made “automatic” so that all the grades in the “Grades” field from the Student Grades table can be added to the “Grades” field on the Students table? 

We will be importing student grades for a particular course to a table and we want this data to show up “automatically” on another table.

Would this be accomplished using an “Automation” with a trigger and action or by using a Javascript?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

In your Students table, you will need to have a linked record field that links to your Grades table.

After you do that, in your Grades table, Airtable has already created a “backlink” field that links back to your Students table.

If you’re not seeing this “backlink” field, then check the “hidden fields” button in your toolbar to make it visible.

Now you will be able to add grades into the grades table, and link each grade to a student from the students table.

I also cover this topic in depth in my free Airtable training course.

Hope this helps!

If you have a budget and you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Hello.

What I would like to accomplish would be to automatically update the (lookup) field in the first table (target) with (linked) data from the second table (source). The only way I know of doing this at the present time is by clicking on the plus sign (+) and selecting items from the pop up window. From what I have found so far, applying an “automated” process of populating a field is not possible using the current version. Perhaps in an update this function may be included.

That is already natively built into Airtable.

I would recommend taking my free Airtable training course so you can learn about linked record fields and lookup fields, and you can see how they work in conjunction with each other.

Hope this helps!

If you have a budget and you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

I think you’re confusing lookup fields with linked record fields. Linked record fields create a connection between records in two tables (and are the ones you link via + ). Lookup fields are uneditable in the target table, and they show data from the linked table. 

From your first response, Airtable doesn’t need or really use expressed “ID”s to associate records across tables. While each record has an ID, they live in the background unless you write a formula to express them. This is very different from an Access style approach. For example, you really don’t need the “ID” = 1 field in your Student Grades table, for the very simple formulation here you’d just have a Short Text field as the primary with “A”, “B”, etc.

Overall though for the objective you’re looking at, you really need 3 tables, a Student table, a Class Table, and a Registration table (which is a junction table). Just think about how your express grades in a student table vs a class table, a student doesn’t have the same grade in every class, nor does every student in a class have the same grade, hence the need for a third table. You link the Registration table to a Student and a Class, and that’s where details like the term and grades go. 

Here’s a sample base from the Airtable Universe (this only has student schedules, but you could add a simple Grade field to the “Class/Student" table) and here’s a BuiltOnAir podcast recording demonstrating a grade tracking base (I know there’s a newer one from BoA too but their site’s search is down).