Just wanted to cross post this in the correct forum since it’s not a feature I couldn’t find but a feature that doesn’t exist yet.
It would be nice if we could change the display field of a table to be something other than the primary key field.
Thanks!
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Almost 4 years since this important feature was asked. Still don’t think you can prioritize it? Is it THAT unuseful in your eyes?
Sad that such a simple feature can’t be added in this span of time… This is needed
I have just worked out how to do this. Go to Customise Field Type, and change the field to Formula. Then, create the formula that will take the required information from the other fields in the entry.
There is some useful (if poorly explained) information if you search Airtable support Using a formula in the primary field (I included the link to that, but in their wisdom, Airtable don’t allow links in these posts!)
Quite difficult to work out what is required, maybe Airtable will rewrite it so that it is easier to understand, but a bit of trial and error - or phone a friend! and you should get there.
Essentially, the formula you choose will be for every entry in that field, so for instance if you ask it to take information from the name field and the date field by writing the formula {Name}&" " &{Date}, then it will show those two together. (e.g. James 31/01/2020).
I get the impression that Airtable can do a lot more, but I would invite them to rewrite their support section in plain English and with more examples, it would make things very much easier, and then even us non-excel-gurus can get the benefit.
Hope this helps people
I have just worked out how to do this. Go to Customise Field Type, and change the field to Formula. Then, create the formula that will take the required information from the other fields in the entry.
There is some useful (if poorly explained) information if you search Airtable support Using a formula in the primary field (I included the link to that, but in their wisdom, Airtable don’t allow links in these posts!)
Quite difficult to work out what is required, maybe Airtable will rewrite it so that it is easier to understand, but a bit of trial and error - or phone a friend! and you should get there.
Essentially, the formula you choose will be for every entry in that field, so for instance if you ask it to take information from the name field and the date field by writing the formula {Name}&" " &{Date}, then it will show those two together. (e.g. James 31/01/2020).
I get the impression that Airtable can do a lot more, but I would invite them to rewrite their support section in plain English and with more examples, it would make things very much easier, and then even us non-excel-gurus can get the benefit.
Hope this helps people
Thanks @Al_Cowie - with a bit of work and lots of juggling I made a new (copied) Table with a Concatnated composite field for the AirTable key ( AMZN 2 @ $1812 = $3624 ) and then used the Calendar view. From the view I could then download an iCal file to my Mac calendar with useful info for my stock purchases.
I’d really appreciate AirTable putting this feature for the Calendar View (select a field - rather than the default table 1st field) on their backlog of features.
Chiming in to agree with all the previous requests for this feature!
I agree, this is an important feature that should be added. I would use it immediatly.
Have there been any updates on this? Can someone from Airtable confirm if this development is in the pipeline. Surely the functionality available in the Grid View and the Card View can be implemented here?
We’re using the Airtable Calendar via our Pro account, and would definitely welcome more development on the Calendar Item detail to show what-ever-field it is that we desire. Currently, by default and with no way to configure, we can only see the date field - which is extremely pointless because that’s what we already see from the calendar view itself, and so we then have to click “expand” record and only then can we sift through all the fields, often too many to see the info we’re after.
We just want to be able to click the calendar item to see a couple of desirable key fields (in our case it’s a “Work Shift Confirmed” tickbox), without having to click “expand record”.
Please please please Airtable devs, give this some love!
We’re using the Airtable Calendar via our Pro account, and would definitely welcome more development on the Calendar Item detail to show what-ever-field it is that we desire. Currently, by default and with no way to configure, we can only see the date field - which is extremely pointless because that’s what we already see from the calendar view itself, and so we then have to click “expand” record and only then can we sift through all the fields, often too many to see the info we’re after.
We just want to be able to click the calendar item to see a couple of desirable key fields (in our case it’s a “Work Shift Confirmed” tickbox), without having to click “expand record”.
Please please please Airtable devs, give this some love!
+1 to this. It would be extremely handy for us too!
We are building a timesheet system for employees and freelancers, and we would like to show in the public calendar view, not only the date, but the Name of the person that logged the hours and the number of hours logged. Although this could be achieved, I believe, using the formula field, I can think of many other situations where this workaround can be very cumbersome!
Thank you Airtable for this amazing product and will be great if we could get some feedback on this feature, even if it’s a negative one.
Hi everyone!
It’s actually very easy to use a formula as your primary field. You can still have unique IDs for each entry but have a custom title in the primary field using the CONCATENATE formula
For example here is my formula in my Primary field:
What this does is take any data from different fields (in this case the fields Series, Ep and Stage) and puts them together into one line of text using & as a seperator. Then I can add fixed text (or a space in between each field) using " " to define the sentence better.
Now I have a very clear title displayed in my calendar while still having unique data for each row and whenever the Stage field updates, it’s reflected in my calendar.
Here’s more information from the AirTable wiki on CONCATENATE:
Fours years on how have Airtable not fixed this… It’s basically just asking for the same functionality developed for the Gallery View, whereby you can configure the info that’s displayed on the card, adding or removing any of the fields you want…
This seems like basic, but important functionality that should be added ASAP.
Yeah it’s unreal this isn’t built in. My usecase is I’m having people sign up for shifts. I have to have each of the shifts named with, obviously, their date and time. When someone signs up for one of the three slots in a shift, they get added to the People tab. I need the People’s names, not the shift names, to show up in the calendar view.
Well I was about to buy a year subscription to AirTable for the whole of my team, I’ve been experimenting for a few days with AirTable, this calendar view is great, but not having this ability and the lack of response from AirTable in 4 years to this thread tells me they don’t care, do you care AirTable?
+1 to this!
This feature would really help us to show our booked equipment for different projects in one calendar view!
I add my vote for this feature
Since there’s no way to set the field inside of Airtable, we’ve built an extension for Airtable that allows you to change the event name to any other field in external calendars. It generates you a calendar ics link that you can subscribe to in any calendar app.
I desperately need this feature. I have some tabs that have the concatenate formula for the primary field, but that isn’t an option in all of the tabs. We shouldn’t have to work around and upend our own systems because this still hasn’t been implemented or even responded to by anyone from Airtable. This would be insanely helpful and like others have already said, should be similar to the Kanban and Gallery views so you can edit what shows up easily.
Just use formula as field type no?
Yes, this is key. Current functionality assume the primary key is useful which is a poor assumption. A good example of where this fails is if you are displaying names on a calendar for assignments. In terms of work calendars (projects, timesheets, etc.) the names are not unique (many will have multiple assignments) and so cannot be the primary key. In these important cases, the calendar view cannot be used.
Another request for this feature. There are customizable cards in Kanban view and it makes no sense why there isn’t the same functionality on Calendar views.
+1 +1 +1 +1 C’mon Airtable!
Waiting for this amazing feature.
Would love to see this too. I want the calendars to work exactly the same as gallery view, where I can select multiple fields to be displayed in the calendar. Please!
Chiming in here too. This feature would be SO USEFUL for our company.