Consolidating Lookup Results

[LaurenMaine]

Apologies in advance if this was answered elsewhere, I did try to find it.

I have a lookup cell that is pulling information from another sheet.  In that other sheet, the cells all share an attribute called “Daily Flow.” I’m wondering if there’s a way for me to format this cell so that if there are duplicates, (like you see “An insect’s world” is shown multiple times), that it only lists it once?

Thanks for the help!

[AlliAlosa · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately a lookup field will not allow you to return unique values (I wish it would)!

One option is to use a rollup field instead, but this will not retain the same look and feel. It will return text instead of the clickable blue pills. When looking up a linked record field, I usually just keep the lookup and try not to let the duplicate values bother me because I like to be able to still click into the looked up linked records… plus it makes filtering based on that field easier.

That being said, if you don’t care about being able to click into those records, you can try changing the field to a rollup pointed at the same field as the lookup, and use the aggregate function:

ARRAYUNIQUE(values)

This should return only the unique values.

[LaurenMaine]

Ok, thanks so much!  Yep, I see what you mean.  It would be better to have the blue pills, but I'll deal with it. Thank you!

[ScottWorld]

@AlliAlosa I have never gotten the clickable blue pills for lookup fields for any of my Airtable accounts nor any of my workspaces! Does this just automatically work for you?

[AlliAlosa]

Whaaat? That’s so strange… Yes, it’s always worked for me. Only when looking up a linked record field, of course.

[ScottWorld]

Ahhhh, I get it! Thank you, @AlliAlosa! It’s just for linked record fields. I DO have that feature. I was under the impression that you were getting it for ANY type of field, which would then jump the user to that record in the linked table (one table away, not 2 tables away). Thank you!! 😃