converting from filemaker

​@jrobgk1 

That is relatively tricky, because Airtable handles relationships very differently than FileMaker handles relationships. (Airtable actually handles relationships very differently than most other database systems.)

In FileMaker (and most database apps), relationships are based on matching a field in Table A to a field in Table B.

In Airtable, relationships are based on matching a field in Table A to the PRIMARY FIELD ONLY in Table B.

In FileMaker (and most database apps), relationships can be based on any field type.

In Airtable, relationships must be done through a linked record field.

In FileMaker (and most database apps), relationships are instantly created when matching values exist on both sides of the relationship.

In Airtable, all relationships must be MANUALLY SET BY THE USER (or set by an automation that can figure out what the user would have wanted to do).

In FileMaker (and most database apps), you can have self-relationships within the same table.

In Airtable, self-relationships within the same table are not possible without writing a lot of custom Javascript code.

So the process of bringing in your data from FileMaker to Airtable can be relatively challenging & time-consuming.

I don’t really have a blueprint to guide you through the process, but in general, it would involve importing your master table into Airtable first.

Then, you can bring in one child table at a time. (You can treat your junction table like a child table.)

But each record in your child table will need to know which record to link to in the master table, and it can only do that by matching to the primary field of the master table.

So this is probably best solved back in FileMaker before doing the import into Airtable.

In FileMaker, you can create a calculation field in your child table that displays the primary field value of the record that a particular field is matched to.

Then, in Airtable, you can convert that FileMaker calculation field (which will start off as a text field in Airtable) into a linked record field, which will automatically find the matching records in the master table, as long as the primary field value in the master table matches.

As I mentioned above, this could be a very lengthy process, and it’s especially challenging because of the differences in how the 2 platforms handle relationships.

Hope this helps! As far as I know, I am the world’s only FileMaker expert AND Airtable expert!

If you’d like to hire the FileMaker & Airtable expert to help you, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable & FileMaker consultant — ScottWorld

Hmm, are you able to provide some screenshots of your data structures?  What issues have you faced with the conversion process so far?

If it helps, I’ve created an example base here that you can poke at if you’d like!

It has tables for ‘Projects’, ‘People’, ‘Tasks’ and ‘Assignments’ which is the main join table.  As you can see, this is where each Task is assigned to a Person (potentially multiple people).  Tasks are linked to Projects, and we can use a lookup field to display which Project a Task is linked to without needing to create a direct link within the ‘Assignments’ table: