The spreadsheet metaphor is both a blessing and curse for Airtable (the company).
When thinking of an Airtable equivalent, don’t think ‘Excel’ or ‘Google Sheets.’ Instead, think ‘Filemaker’ or ‘Access.’ Each cell represents an individual field in a relational database. If you had to combine fields in Filemaker — well, there’s probably a command or utility to do that these days, but to do so in an early version of Filemaker, you’d have to create a new calculated field that contained a summation (or concatenation, or some other form of combination) of the two original fields and then delete the originals, leaving the new combined one.
The process is the same for Airtable, with one small, but vital, difference.
I am going to assume your two fields are both single-line text fields, for simplicity’s sake. If not, things may change slightly; provide a little more detail, and we’ll try to refine the answer. For the same of this illustration, I’m using the cleverly mnemonic names {Field1} and {Field2}.
- Create a new formula field called
{Field1+2}.
- Configure it’s formula to read
{Field1}&' '&{Field2}
As soon as you save the new field definition, it creates a merged field from the two original ones.
If you want both the component fields and the combination field, you’re done. Continue to enter data in {Field1} and {Field2}, and {Field1+2} will continue to be created automatically.
If you have no need for the source fields, and you intend to enter any additional data directly into the combined field, you can delete {Field1} and {Field2} — after you do one more thing.
- Right-Click on the header (that is, the name of the field) for
{Field1+2} and select ‘customize field type’. Change the field type from formula to single-line text. This will convert the formulas to a static (unchanging) representation of the formula value. Save the changes.
- Right-click on
{Field1} and select ‘Delete field’. Do the same for {Field2}.
If you didn’t do Step 3 before deleting the fields, when you deleted {Field1}, its contribution to {Field1+2} would disappear from the combo field.
