Creating related fields (categories and sub-categories)

[Expatica_Team]

Hi,

My table is a list of articles, with each article belonging to a category and then a sub-category. These last 2 are drop-down fields, but at the moment they are not related - meaning, the sub-category field of an article in category 1 will show all sub-categories of ALL categories instead of just the sub-categories of category 1.

How would I go about relating the categories and sub-categories?

Optimally what I’d prefer to do is actually have another table listing all categories with their subcategories and then link that table to my article list table. But I’m running into the same problem there too - subcategories aren’t related to categories again.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you.

[W_Vann_Hall]

Unfortunately, Airtable currently does not support conditional selection (that is, where the available options of one field are determined by the value of a different field). About the best one can do at present is to select based on category:subcategory and then break out individual category and subcategory values.

This demo base offers two methods of doing so, one based on linked records and the other on a compound single select. While neither is as convenient as a true conditional selection would be, either offers similar functionality until such time as Airtable is enhanced to support conditional selection.

Airtable

Subcategory demo - Airtable

Explore the "Subcategory demo" base on Airtable.

[Expatica_Team]

Thank you for making this demo! I think it won’t work for me because some articles will have a main category and no sub. Unless I make “None” a subcategory too, I guess? Urgh! I hope that Airtable develops conditional selections at some point. It’s a great tool, but some little things like this are missing here and there, which would make my work so much easier!

I really appreciate your help, many thanks.

[W_Vann_Hall]

I’m not sure how I missed this, and I expect you’ve found some solution or workaround long before now, but for anyone who later stumbles across this exchange, I’ve updated the demo base to support subcategory-less entries…

[W_Vann_Hall]

This was flagged to my attention recently by someone ‘liking’ it. I just wanted to mention I’ve since posted a different approach that supports conditional[ish] logic using linked records, in case anyone stumbles across this thread but not the other.