Help

The Community will be temporarily unavailable starting on Friday February 28. We’ll be back as soon as we can! To learn more, check out our Announcements blog post.

Display Field Data for Linked Record instead of Primary Key (AutoNumber)

Topic Labels: Base design
Solved
Jump to Solution
2714 3
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Shelley_Stephen
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I have tables set up with Autonumber as the primary key. It’s basically my version of a CRM. I have the Contacts linked to the Company records, but it displays the AutoNum instead of the Contact name. Is there a way to choose what displays when you link records?

I saw a previous topic that the recommendation was to have the AutoNum NOT be the primary key. Since there can be a number of Joe Smiths or JaneMillers in a given set of names (examples only), I’d prefer to keep the autonum to get a unique key. It would definitely be helpful to see ‘Jane Miller’ in the company record instead of ‘1’…

1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Hi @Shelley_Stephen_Voic,

For a linked record, the value that’s in the primary field will be used for the name of that record. I might recommend using the autonumber not as the primary field, and then using a formula in the primary field to combine both the autonumber and the contact name.

A formula you could use (adjusting to reflect your actual field names) is: {Autonumber Field} & " - " & {Name Field}. This will result in something like 12 - John Doe as the primary field name.

Let me know if that helps!

See Solution in Thread

3 Replies 3
Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Hi @Shelley_Stephen_Voic,

For a linked record, the value that’s in the primary field will be used for the name of that record. I might recommend using the autonumber not as the primary field, and then using a formula in the primary field to combine both the autonumber and the contact name.

A formula you could use (adjusting to reflect your actual field names) is: {Autonumber Field} & " - " & {Name Field}. This will result in something like 12 - John Doe as the primary field name.

Let me know if that helps!

Thank you. I realized after reading another post that having an auto num field for an index is not necessary in AirTable, so I took mine out - simplified things!

Great Shelley, thanks for the heads up!