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Airtable functionality - combining records and cells

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Matthew
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hi - this is maybe a pretty basic question, but after reading through some help docs (e.g. how to link records, using intermediary tables to join many-many relationships, etc), I’m think that either I’m missing something, OR airtable isn’t a good fit for what I’m trying to do.

Basically, I have 1 table, the ‘Research Questions’ table, which is populated with 5 columns and 4 rows.

Column 1 is a list of Properties.

Rows 1-4 each contain a different property: Property A, Property B, Property C, Property D.

Column 2 is a particular Feature - let’s call it Feature A.

The remaining columns are Feature B, Feature C, Feature D.

The intersecting cells are research questions which combined the intersecting Property and Feature. So, Column 2, Row 1 is a research question based on Property A and Feature A, etc.

This results in 16 research questions.

I would like to duplicate this table into, say, 5 new tables, with each table representing a single interview with a research informant.

For each interview table, I will replace the questions in the 16 cells with responses to those questions. So, in one of these tables, Column 2, Row 1 would be a response to the question based on the intersection between Property A and Feature A.

Finally, I want to combine all of the responses into several tables. There would be a ‘Property A’ table, which links to the records from all of the different tables, and populates responses from the interviews I’ve conducted.

Perhaps this isn’t possible with Airtable?

1 Reply 1

Its possible in Airtable, just not using the method you’ve described. Your description is how you might accomplish this in a standard spreadsheet software like Excel or Google Sheets.

Here’s what it would look like if you did it in Airtable, or another relational database:

Notable difference: In a database, it makes more sense to store all similar data, such as interview responses, in one table as opposed to one table per interview. You’d use filtered views instead to show one person’s responses at a time.