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Re: Following DATETIME_FORMAT with field names

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Alba_Machado
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hi Airtable Friends,

I want to combine four things in my primary field: (1) Story ID#, (2) Date, (3) Storyteller, and (4) Story Title – all separated by a " - ", of course. I was able to get the first two things with this formula:

({Story ID#} & " - " & DATETIME_FORMAT(Received, ‘DD/MM’)) & " - "

But when I follow this up with {Storyteller} & " - " & {Story Title}, I get a message that says: “Sorry, there was a problem saving this field. Can’t save field because it causes a circular reference.” To be clear, here’s the full formula that keeps getting rejected:

({Story ID#} & " - " & DATETIME_FORMAT(Received, ‘DD/MM’)) & " - " {Storyteller} & " - " & {Story Title}

I’ve tried a number of variations using parenthesis and curly brackets, but always get the “sorry” message. Grateful to anyone who can help me get past this irksome obstacle!

22 Replies 22

Are any of the following fields also Formula fields?

  • {Story ID#}
  • {Storyteller}
  • {Story Title}

Can you give the formula expression for them?
You might have a circular reference (directly or indirectly) between fields that’s causing the error.

Usually Airtable throws a specific “Circular Reference” error for that. But definitely worth double checking on those field references, because everything else about the formula looks right.

@Alba_Machado - and here I thought this was a simple little fix. I’m kind of stumped right now lol.

Storyteller is a linked field, but I removed it from the formula and even with just Story Title, which is just single line text, it still doesn’t work.

What kind of field is {Received}?

{Received} is a Created Time field

Jeremy_Oglesby
14 - Jupiter
14 - Jupiter

Out of curiousity, @Alba_Machado, can you try copy/pasting this and see what happens?

T({Story ID#}) & 
" - " & 
DATETIME_FORMAT(Received, 'DD/MM') & 
" - " & 
T({Storyteller}) & 
" - " & 
T({Story Title})

“Circular reference” again

Ah, so it IS a circular reference error!

Can you try and delete this line:
T({Storyteller}) &

Alba_Machado
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Deleting the T({Storyteller}) line did the trick! Now I’ll just have to figure out how to get the author’s name in there. Maybe using a Lookup instead of the Linked