Hello,
I have somewhat complex workbook that I setup a couple years ago. I need help making an important adjustment.
I have an “Input tab” where I link every line item (“Occurrence”) with a “Reference Entity” on another tab.
I am using the lookup function to combine all Occurrences that link to a given Reference Entity. This way I can see all the information I have about that Reference Entity in one cell (the “Rollup Cell”).
New Occurences appear in the Rollup Cell in chronological order. (whenever I add new occurance it is the last text to show up in Rollup Cell.
However, the amount of data in the rollup cell is getting very large (can be 50-75 pages of text in some of them). So to see the most recent addition to the cell I need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the Rollup cell. This is very cumbersome.
MY QUESTION: HOW CAN I CHANGE THE LOOKUP FUNCTION SO THAT NEW OCCURRENCES ARE ADDED IN REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER (newest entries are at the top of Rollup cell)???
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP!!!
& thanks so much! :slightly_smiling_face:
Welcome to the community, @Brent_Engel! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: First, I noticed that you switch back and forth between “lookup function” and “rollup cell”, but it sounds like you’re describing the same thing. If it’s a rollup field, then please call it a rollup field. There’s a separate field type that is a lookup field, and while the two behave somewhat similar on the surface, there are some major differences, so it’s important to know which one we’re talking about when trying to address any problem.
To the problem itself, the order that rolled-up info appears in a rollup field is driven by the order in which the related links were made. While the link field properties lets you change the display order of the links, that has no bearing on the display order in either lookup or rollup fields. The only way to change the order of things in either of those fields is to remove all of the links, then remake them in reverse chronological order. Not something that anyone in their right mind would do, obviously.
That said, there’s a way you can find the single most recent value in a lookup and only display that item, so that you don’t have to scroll through the entire list. It takes a bit of setup, though, and my brain is on the verge of turning to pudding, so I’m going to link some threads where similar stuff was done:
@Justin_Barrett, after I changed the order of my links in my linked record field, my lookup field automatically updated itself in the same order to match the linked record field! :slightly_smiling_face: I haven’t tested this with a rollup field.
If you literally change the order of the links, then yes, the data from lookup and rollup fields follows. However, I was talking about switching the state of the “Show linked records in reverse order” option in the link field settings (which is only available in bases made before April 2020). That setting only changes the display order of the links, not the actual order they were linked, and it’s the latter that drives the output from both lookup and rollup fields.
