Batch adding an option to varied Multiple Select

[Open_Letter]

Apologies if this question has been answered somewhere else! I couldn’t find anything in the topics section.

Basically, I need to add new selections to a multiple select column within a particular view. I can’t copy/paste because each row has other unique tags (It won’t let me add an image. Hopefully this makes sense).

It need to work so that when we send a new book out, the column will contain the books they’ve been sent + the newest book without having to add in several hundred manually one by one.

Anyone know how to do this? Thanks for your help!

[Justin_Barrett]

Let me see if I understand your scenario correctly. It sounds like a book club, so I’m going to call it that for the sake of this example. If I’m off the mark, let me know, but that’s what it sounds like so far.

When a person joins the club, they start receiving books on a regular basis. The older someone’s membership is, the more books they’ve received over time, and you want to track the specific books that each member has been sent. When a new book is sent out, you want that book to reflect in all members’ records without having to manually add it one record at a time.

Is that an accurate(ish) assessment of what you’re trying to achieve?

[Kamille_Parks]

Add formula field that lists the linked books, then adds the new book at the end of it: {Books}&', Name of New Book'

Copy and paste the formula column into your multi-select column.

You’ll have to do this with each time, and this assumes each person gets the same book at the same time, but this preserves each record’s unique tag combination

[Open_Letter]

Thanks so much, Kamille! This will work for what we need.

It would be ideal if there were a more straightforward way—this makes sense to me but it might be more difficult for me to hand off to an intern, for example.

[Kamille_Parks]

You might be able to do this with Integromat

• Your [Books] table will need a {Created Time} field, use that field as the trigger
• You’ll need a Search module to get all you team member records, passed through an Iterator module to execute the following task one by one
• Another Airtable module to update a record by its ID. Have it concatenate the current record’s book list with a comma and the book’s record ID from the first module which retrieves the latest book.

[Mike_McLaughlin]

I think there is a quick and dirty way to do this(how I usually modify my multi/single select lists).

• Create X number of new blank records(or let it auto expand and fill)

• paste a list of values into the multiple select field and they will be added to the list

• delete extraneous records

CTRL-V

delete records

Voila

[GlugGlug]

I have the same question, and can’t find a good answer in these answers here. We have lists of “Manufacturers” to put in from time to time. 100s of them depending on industry. We’d like a simple way to copy/paste lists from text files (each name on a new line) as it’s possible in Google Sheets or Excel. In Airtable one has to “add an option” manually, which is fairly silly. Any ideas how to do this without creating another table?

[Kamille_Parks]

If you just want to add a bunch of new possible selections to a Multi/Single-Select field, what’s wrong with @Mike_McLaughlin’s solution above? It seems like it does what you want, you just have to delete the extra records afterward which can be done in two clicks