removing records that have duplicate values in 1 field

That makes sense! You could set up an automation in Airtable that triggers on new record creation, checks for duplicates in the selected field, and deletes the older entry. A script in Airtable Automations or a third-party tool like Make/Zapier might help streamline this.

​@manguy43 

I have several clients automatically deleting duplicates by using Make’s advanced Airtable automations.

As @furqanhamid mentioned above, automating the deletion of records can only be done via JavaScript or via 3rd-party automation tools that tap into Airtable's API, such as Make (which is far superior to Zapier).

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is one of the ways that you could instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

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

Hi ​@ScottWorld and ​@furqanhamid,

thank you guys for the prompt response. I have taken into account your feedback and tried to use make to form an automation. However, as a first-time make user, it’s been hard figuring out what the issue is with my automation.
 

I’m sorry, I think the issue lies within the formula field but I have no idea what to do to fix it. Please help

Where you typed in “map device ID automatically”, simply replace that text by mapping the device ID from your first module (the watch records module).

Also, be sure to put that in double quotation marks instead of single quotation marks.

Additionally, I’m not sure if Airtable will understand {Created Time} < TODAY(). You’d have to try that in a formula field in Airtable to see if that gives you proper results. 

Ah I’ve done this before with just Airtable automations before and I’ve set it up here for you to check out!  Here’s an example of it working:

The idea is that we use a ‘Find record’ automation to look for records with the same duplicate value, but also exclude the newly created record from that search:

And if we manage to find records with the same value as the newly created record, then we run a script action to delete them all, and here’s how the script woud look:

You’d need to update the script and replace the table ID though, e.g.:

let {recordIds} = input.config()

while (recordIds.length > 0) {
await base.getTable('YOUR_TABLE_ID').deleteRecordsAsync(recordIds.slice(0, 50));
recordIds = recordIds.slice(50);
}