Incredibly slow loading of (child) list

Question

In the interface I have a list with two linked levels. Level 2 (parent) only has a handful of records. One of the records in Level 2 has over 4000 Level1 (child) records. When I open that parent record to vie the child records it is extremely slow and the slowness makes the application largely non responsive - until I move to a different parent record or some other table in the interface.

If I simply open another list in the interface with only the one child table, all 4500 records open pretty much instantly.

What's the best way to handle this?

PeterG · Accepted Answer

I found out the real culprit for the slow rendering. This table has a lot of fields. It’s an imported table from another platform. I had about 8 old junkfields that imported as single select - half of them with hundreds of selections. So each record was loading with those 100’s of erroneous selections thus the slowness.. I deleted those old fields and now the child list of about 4200 records opens instantly.

anthonyXRay · Answer

This is an issue that is known to occur in an Airtable Interface. If a linked record is trying to render over 4000+ child records inside the parent records detail it is struggling to render all the previews for the linked record all at once. Thats why the child table opens instantly on its own.

Some tips for improving this are to either add a filtered view inside the child table. Then use a separate list element in the interface that gets filtered by the parent, this will load everything in a much more stable paginated way. You can also limit what the linked fields display. Basically have it display fewer fields per previewed linked record, this will mean less rendering needed. You could also split your Interface page up; have the parent list on one page and the child list on a separate page. Filter this by using a URL parameter or Interface filter. This should keep both pages fast and alleviate your problem.

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