Reference looked up emails for automation

[Amy_Herman]

Hi there,

I have a communications calendar that I’m trying to have automate some email sends through the Gmail automation. I have my emails on that table as a lookup field, but the automation isn’t recognizing it as an email address so it’s failing the test.

Is there a formula that will basically copy what’s being looked up and just format properly so that it’s an email address?

Thank you for your help!

Amy

[ScottWorld]

Automations don’t currently work with lookup fields, so you will need to create a formula field that equals your lookup field. Then, use that formula field instead.

[Amy_Herman]

Hi @ScottWorld, I tried that but it still didn’t work. How can I make the formula display in “email format” so it is recognized properly?

[ScottWorld]

Please post some screenshots of what’s going on!

[Amy_Herman]

It’s not recognizing that the “formatted emails” column is actually email addresses. The test keeps failing.

So grateful for your help, @ScottWorld :slightly_smiling_face:

[ScottWorld]

@Amy_Herman

Ah okay, since you have multiple email addresses per record, your lookup field (and your formula field) are both resulting in an array instead of a text string (which is what the Automation is expecting to receive).

So, you will want to change your formula field to say this instead:

{Recipient Emails} & ""

That will convert your array into a text string, and then it will work! :slightly_smiling_face:

And yes, this would be so much easier if lookup fields just worked natively with automations! Wink, wink, Airtable! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

[Amy_Herman]

Hi @ScottWorld, I’m still getting an error. :frowning: Do you have any other ideas?

[Kamille_Parks · Accepted solution]

As I mentioned in your other post asking a very similar question, you can do this with a a single Rollup field using ARRAYJOIN()

[ScottWorld]

@Amy_Herman You might need to re-run your trigger test. Then re-run your action test.

@Kamille_Parks Thanks for the great rollup idea!

[Amy_Herman]

Hi @Kamille_Parks, I’m not seeing the email field since I’m not linking to it directly. I guess I have to rebuild my base in order to follow your suggestion so that I link to email directly instead of participant name. I’m trying to avoid that if possible.