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My teachers need to record all the dates when a student is absent. We do not need to record present, just absence.

We also need to easily count all of the time a student has been absent

One way to do it is for me to make an attendance table. The teacher can select a date and then link to the student table with all students who were absent that day/

Back on the student table side I can count how many dates were attached.

Is there a better way to do this??? One that would not me require me to create a completely separate table for attendance?

I’m also wondering how this can be done


Just curious as to why you wouldn’t want a separate table for attendance? This seems like a perfect one (student) to many (attendance) relationship. Just what a relational database like Airtable was designed to handle.

To answer your question, you could create a column for every day in your student table, but now you’re using Airtable more like a spreadsheet.


Just looking to male sure there’s not an easier, cleaner way to do this


Just looking to male sure there’s not an easier, cleaner way to do this


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To relational DB fans (like me), it’s in a nicely structured one to many relationship. Airtable does a great job of hiding most of the messy stuff from you.


I’m trying to find a good way to do this as well (for ballet classes). In a regular spreadsheet, I simply have a tab for each class I teach, with a list of students and a column for each date we have class. I mark the students present or absent. It’s really simple to set up and to use.

I’d like to transition to using Airtable because that way I can have contact information, injury history, and other information for each student recorded all in the same place, but I am having a hard time coming up with a way to track attendance across multiple classes that will be easy to use and view.


I’m trying to find a good way to do this as well (for ballet classes). In a regular spreadsheet, I simply have a tab for each class I teach, with a list of students and a column for each date we have class. I mark the students present or absent. It’s really simple to set up and to use.

I’d like to transition to using Airtable because that way I can have contact information, injury history, and other information for each student recorded all in the same place, but I am having a hard time coming up with a way to track attendance across multiple classes that will be easy to use and view.


Multiple classes sounds like views to me. :slightly_smiling_face:


I’m trying to find a good way to do this as well (for ballet classes). In a regular spreadsheet, I simply have a tab for each class I teach, with a list of students and a column for each date we have class. I mark the students present or absent. It’s really simple to set up and to use.

I’d like to transition to using Airtable because that way I can have contact information, injury history, and other information for each student recorded all in the same place, but I am having a hard time coming up with a way to track attendance across multiple classes that will be easy to use and view.


If you have students that take multiple classes, then I’d have a student table, a class table, and a student-class cross-reference table that assigns students to classes.

And to visualize them, @Tuur is right. You could have a view for class, but all of your data is nicely normalized so there’s no repetition.