One master column in several table

[Arvi_Po]

Hello,

I have about 5 tables containing different information but with one Column being consistent throughout the 5 tables (Let’s say Column A in all these tables are Name). How do I make it so that I only need to update the first table’s Column A and the other 4 will automatically reflect this update? For example, right now I have 40 items in Column A and would like to add 5 more without having to add it to all 5 tables manually. Pretty much like an importrange function in Excel. Thanks!

[Dominik_Bosnjak]

That doesn’t sound like the best base design, why not just use a linked record field? Or is that what’s you’re already doing and I just misunderstood? Is this field being kept persistent for some automation to easily reference?

Really impossible to offer anything concrete without more details, or better yet, screnshots illustrating the problem.

[Arvi_Po]

Hi Dominik,

Say I’m building a database for a list of companies and want to keep track of some information in different tables because it will have different users. We would have the following:

1. Company Information - this would contain the company profile
2. Governance Compliance tracking
3. Tax Compliance tracking
4. Reporting tracking
5. Internal Financial Information

We do utilize linked record to pull out some info from the Company Information tab. What we are trying to figure out is if it’s possible to have new rows (new companies) added to the Company Information table and it gets automatically added to the other 4.

[Dominik_Bosnjak]

1. Governance Compliance tracking
2. Tax Compliance tracking

Those two don’t sound incompatible tbh. How many views and sections do you use per base? How may of your views don’t utilize any filters or conditional coloring? Those are the things meant to help you make sense of related information.

What we are trying to figure out is if it’s possible to have new rows (new companies) added to the Company Information table and it gets automatically added to the other 4.

Sure, an automation is your best bet then. Should be able to pull it off with no code, but my advice is to create a practice version of your base with all those five tables but zero records (you can duplicate bases sans the records easily). Get it working there, make sure it’s not looping indefinitely or triggering anything else, and then just duplicate it for use in the real thing.

Alternatively, a script that creates one record an updates four others would be trivial to write and you might even be able to learn how to do it by just studying the several mass-linking scripts on the “marketplace”.

[Justin_Barrett]

Dominik_Bosnjak:

How many views and sections do you use per base? How may of your views don’t utilize any filters or conditional coloring? Those are the things meant to help you make sense of related information.

I agree with Dominik. This sounds like something that should be solved by using views on a single table, not duplicating data across multiple similar tables.