Grouping by Mullti-Select issue

[Glenn_Fick]

I have a multi-select field called “Trades”. A contact can do multiple “Trades”. I want to group by trades, but I don’t want the contacts with multiple trades grouped into their own unique multi-trade grouping, I want them to appear once in each trade grouping. Ex: list of trades is: demo, grading, hauloff.
I want a contractor that does demo and hauloff to appear once under the demo grouping and also under hauloff, and I want the only groupings to be demo, grading, hauloff. I do NOT want a Grouping of demo & hauloff combined. How do I achieve this. It seems like it would be a frequent issue.

[Justin_Barrett]

I’m afraid this can’t be done for a couple of reasons. First, grouping operates based on the full field contents, not subcomponents like multiple select choices. Second, each record only appears once in a given table. Grouping won’t create a duplicate of a record in another group.

One alternate way to organize companies by trade is to turn your multiple-select field into a link to a [Trades] table. In fact, you can convert the existing {Trades} field into a link field to a new [Trades] table, and Airtable will add the options and build the links automatically. On the [Trades] table, you can see a list of all companies linked to each trade separately. If a contractor is linked to Hauloff and Grading, there will be two separate links for them—one for each trade—in the [Trades] table.

Will that work for your needs?

[Glenn_Fick]

Thanks Justin. That’s what I ended up doing. At first, it seemed like it violated the rule of extra tables, but it works.

[Justin_Barrett]

Glenn_Fick:

At first, it seemed like it violated the rule of extra tables, but it works.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the rule of extra tables.” While it’s true that having more tables isn’t always better, there are plenty of times when adding a table actually solves a problem and/or makes it easier to achieve a desired goal.