Filter with very limited criteria

Trung_Nguyen · ‎Aug 12, 2020

Let’s say that there are 2 customers: A and HA.

I have this “customer” field as a linked field to a text field on another “CUSTOMER” table (one to one - each item belongs to 1 customer only).

To filter out items for customer “HA” is fine with condition: “customer” contains “HA”.

However, filter out customer “A” with condition “customer” contains “A” does not work as “HA” still contains A" and it shows all items for both clients.

The filter does not show other options like “is”, “=” and very limited to just a few as in the image.

Thank you in advance for any input!

ScottWorld · ‎Aug 12, 2020

That’s odd that Airtable doesn’t give an “IS” filter option for a linked field. I’m not sure why it doesn’t.

Interestingly, “IS” filters DO appear for lookup fields, but I don’t know how to get them to work properly with lookup fields. If anybody has any insights on this, please let me know.

Anyways, the way that you can solve your issue is by creating a formula field that equals your linked field, and then create an “IS” filter on the formula field instead.

Alternatively, you could also go to your other table (the linked table), and do an “IS” filter there.

Trung_Nguyen · ‎Aug 12, 2020

I got it to work by add a lookup field. I am getting to understand Airtable bit by bit. A linked field links to a record, not a single field so it does not have “IS” filter option.

A lookup field behaves the same as the field it links to.

Anyway, thank you for your instruction.

ScottWorld · ‎Aug 12, 2020

Glad you solved it!

A lookup field doesn’t really behave the same as the field it looks up, because a lookup field is an array of values (that can’t be edited). If the array is comprised of numbers or dates, you can format the lookup field so that the individual items of the array are formatted in the way that you want. But not all field types can be formatted like they looked in the original table — for example, ratings fields, duration fields, checkbox fields, etc.