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I am creating a catalog of sheet music for some musical groups I play in. It has a main table with all the usual information to be expected (title, composer, arranger, etc.) plus some additional info, such as alias names and associated works or titles. All the information is either directly stored in the table, or is in a linked table (composers and arrangers, for example).


The alias and associated works are useful. Some examples of these associations are:



  1. The title, “It’s the Hard Knock Life”, also has an entry in the associated works field indicating that it is associated with “Annie”.

  2. The title “Ukrainian Bell Carol” has an alias entry as “Carol of the Bells”.

  3. The “Hallelujah Chorus” has an associated entry indicating it is part of the oratorio “Messiah”.


The point of all that is to indicate how useful this information could be in searching. For example, when searching for a specific title, I would also like the associated/alias fields to be searched for the same title.


Now, I can easily do this by clicking the filter button, and manually entering the filter criteria, and then adding an “OR” with the same criteria on the associated/alias column.


But, it would be easier, especially for other members of the musical groups to be able to simply enter the search criteria into a form, and (somehow) be able to specify the form text boxes as parameters for the filter. That is, a user simply types in the search criteria and, presto, those entered parameters are used to filter the table.


In other words, I’d like to be able to have a query created on the fly, according to search criteria supplied in a form. (That is, essentially, build a WHERE clause dynamically.)


Is there a way to do this with Airtable?


Thank you.


David Grove

Hello @David_Grove,


The only way to do this natively in Airtable is to use the Search Block:




You can set which fields you want the search block to search, and it gives you a search box to type into.


You can also install multiple search blocks, so you can preset multiple different searches and rename each one of them to represent its particular search.


Alternatively, outside of Airtable, you could use an external search form tool like this one, which can be set to search multiple fields of your choice:




Hope this helps! If this answers your question, could you please mark this comment as the solution to your question? This will help other people who have a similar question. 🙂

Hello @David_Grove,


The only way to do this natively in Airtable is to use the Search Block:




You can set which fields you want the search block to search, and it gives you a search box to type into.


You can also install multiple search blocks, so you can preset multiple different searches and rename each one of them to represent its particular search.


Alternatively, outside of Airtable, you could use an external search form tool like this one, which can be set to search multiple fields of your choice:




Hope this helps! If this answers your question, could you please mark this comment as the solution to your question? This will help other people who have a similar question. 🙂


So, the bottom line is that there is no way to do this with the free version, is that right?


Thank you.


DG

So, the bottom line is that there is no way to do this with the free version, is that right?


Thank you.


DG


On the free version, you have filters, and you also have command-F (control-F) to find any values on the screen.

Thank you.


Yes, a filter is a way to accomplish this, but requires knowing about the structure of the table, and how to explicitly set up a Boolean expression. But, even that is only cursory, since the Boolean expression permitted by a filter is so superficial.


Thank you, your answer seems to be accurate, and the best that can be done.


I thought it would be cool to be able to offer an online solution to my quintet, but, at the end of the day, MS Access offers superior functionality. In my opinion.


DG

Thank you.


Yes, a filter is a way to accomplish this, but requires knowing about the structure of the table, and how to explicitly set up a Boolean expression. But, even that is only cursory, since the Boolean expression permitted by a filter is so superficial.


Thank you, your answer seems to be accurate, and the best that can be done.


I thought it would be cool to be able to offer an online solution to my quintet, but, at the end of the day, MS Access offers superior functionality. In my opinion.


DG


Airtable does not compete against MS Access nor FileMaker nor Salesforce… all of those products are fully-relational, enterprise-level, fully-secure database systems where the sky is the limit. Airtable is a spreadsheet app with some useful database features added into it.

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