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Re: Conditional Multi-Selection Field

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Joshua_Todd
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

How can I change the the multi-select options based on whats chosen in a previous multi-selection field. For Example, if I have 2 multiple selection fields: Field 1 for State and Field 2 for City, if I choose New Jersey, only New Jersey cities would then be in field 2

28 Replies 28
Greg_Ashby
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

+1 for the feature request. This is a must have for automating a workflow.

Greg_Ashby
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Seems like there’s a few threads asking for the same thing. Is there a way to tag one of the threads to get an update from airtable directly on it?

Noel_Howell
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

The original question (9 months ago) could be solved by having a separate table with all the City + State values in 2 columns and a 3rd Formula concatenating them together (City, ST).
On the original table make a column for ‘link to another table’ instead of a multi-select and then as the city is typed and selected, you can make a lookup column that pulls in the State field from the the other table.

Same here. I logged in here to ask the same question.
Would be great to have this option intregrated.
I have one field (Field1) with “signle select”, and another field that should have a pre-defined dropdown menu, based on what has been selected in Field1

EDIT: seems that this is an easy solution. Thanks @Noel_Howell

Emil_Lilja
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Hey @Noel_Howell. How would a formula like that look? Currently building a base from scratch and I’m new to how the formulas work. Thanks!

I assume you are referring to the formula she mentions for “concatenating” the city and state…?

It would look like this, if you have a field called City, and a field called State:

{City} & ", " & {State}

You can use the & symbol to easily “concatenate” (combine together) data as “strings” (collections of letters, numbers, punctuation, and white spaces). So this formula will first put the city name (retrieved from the City field in that row) as a string, followed by a comma and a space, and then put the state name (retrieved from the State field in that row) as a string.

Exactly - Thanks @Jeremy_Oglesby. (Also thanks for correctly identifying me as a she not a he. LOL)

Hope that answers your question @Emil_Lilja?

I’m still not clear on this, I am trying to create a multiple select field that will populate a conditional set of options depending on what is in another column. So, in the example of the cities and states: If I create a second table with cities and states, what am I to put in the original table to call up the specific cities as multiple select options when a specific state is selected in its respective column? The formula offered above does not seem to answer this question. Thanks in advance for any guidance!

NOTICE: THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION TO THE ORIGINAL POST, BUT A WORKAROUND WHERE YOU ONLY HAVE TO SELECT THE CITY TYPING IN THE SEARCH BOX (IF YOU KNOW HOW IT IS SPELLED -WHY NOT?-), AND THE STATE POPULATES AUTOMATICALLY.

Let’s say you manage People and you want to add their City.

  1. Create a Cities table.
  2. Add a State field to that Table, and add the records for the Cities with their States
  3. In the People table, add a Linked Record field to Cities.
  4. Add a Lookup field for State, that gets the State from the previous City linked record field. The Formula field is optional to join both and get something like Los Angeles, CA.

The MultiSelect field type has nothing to all of this because by now it is not dynamic, it’s static with the values you enter in its configuration.

That solves the problem when someone begins with a city, but that’s not what the original question from @Joshua_Todd (or the follow-up from @Anna_Perlmutter) is about. Joshua was asking about the reverse: the user begins by choosing the state, which then narrows down the available list of cities in an adjacent field to those only within the chosen state. That’s not something that Airtable can do yet (as far as I know).