Following DATETIME_FORMAT with field names

[Alba_Machado]

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!

[Rey_Crisostomo]

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.

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Rey_Crisostomo:

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.

[Alba_Machado]

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.

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

What kind of field is {Received}?

[Alba_Machado]

{Received} is a Created Time field

[Jeremy_Oglesby · Accepted solution]

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})

[Alba_Machado]

“Circular reference” again

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Ah, so it IS a circular reference error!

[Rey_Crisostomo]

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

[Alba_Machado]

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