Return Link Name (not reccord ID)

[Donald_Newlands]

Hi,
I’m looking for an easy way to have Airtable return the name of a linked record (instead of using the ID and doing a separate API call). Is there an Airtable formula that can get the name of a linked record as text?
Thanks!
-Donald

[Tuur]

I don’t think so. AFAIK you can only use formulas for filtering.

You can add a second column with the formula to your table as a workaround.

[chris_atwood]

Hi -
New here. Bumping this up because I have the same question. In my use case, I am retrieving record via rest get call. Would like to use the display value of the linked field in the call but appears only option is the record id? Thanks in advance for any thoughts!
-Chris

[openside]

Chris - you need to add a lookup column to your table that looks up the name value. Then it will be available in the API call

[chris_atwood]

Thanks openside! I’m all set now.

Just one quick comment for others going down my beginner path:
the pointer about the lookup field is a great one and let’s one retrieve the display value when specifying a reference field in the fields you want returned (without it, you get the identifier string). My initial query was about suppling the display value in the selection criteria - which works without a lookup field. My issue was a mistake in how I structured the initial get call.

[Robert_Baindour]

What was your solution?
I am using the LIST method on the Airtable NODEJS api, and I want to get display names and not ids.