Hey Karen,
I have had the same problem in the past (wanting my linkedRecord to another table to show more meaningful info).
The good news is you have a number of options here to use:
1. Use a formula in the first column of your table to make a meaningful record ID instead of just using numbers.
Example, for our Personnel table, I don’t use an auto number for the record ID, instead I use something like BillM01. This is a last name, first name, number combination.
This way, I reasonably can know which people are assigned to a certain task without needing to see the whole name, or record. The limitation of this method, is that (of course) it is impractical to add all the bits of data you may want to know about a record into one field. Still, it serves it’s purpose: reasonably fast record identification by a human.
Below is an example of the formula I have used for some of my record IDs. The formula concatenates 3 fields by:
- grabbing the first 4 letters of the preferred last name (or legal last name if no preferred name exists),
- grabbing the first letter of the preferred first name (or legal first name), and
- grabbing a number field to distinguish from similar names, and appends it to the end of that chain.
CONCATENATE(
… LEFT( IF({LName-Pref} = “”, {LName-Legal}, {LName-Pref}), 4),
… LEFT( IF({FName-Pref} = “”, {FName-Legal}, {FName-Pref}), 1),
… CountNM
)
If this solution does not give you enough data, let’s look at your second option.
2. Add a “LOOKUP” field to your Very Hoizontal table, pulling the needed and related data from your Linked field
Here is how this option works.
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Pretend you have two tables: Persons and VeryHorizontals – aka VHS.
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Persons table has IDs significant to humans, so it…
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has as its record ID a formula of LastName+First+ID# (see above formula), with ID’s like these: BillM01, McDoR01, HancJ01.
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has another field called phone
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and email
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In VHS table…
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You have a field called "JobAssignees"
And you are now happy to know BillM01 is assigned to the task (instead of just 12345).
Progress, you say, but not enough…
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Because what you really to know is how to reach BillM01 from the Gallery View
(without needing to open the persons table)…
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So, Add a new field and call it "GalleryInfo" (or “AssigneeEmail” or whatever you like).
** Make the field type a “lookup” field.
** in the lookup settings, indicate which VHS field is linked to your Persons table
. . . (ie “JobAsignees” is pulling from the Persons table, so tell it “JobAssignees”).
** in the lookup settings, also indicate which field you would like to see FROM your Persons table
. . . (we want to see the Email field from the Persons table, so we select “Email”)
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Now the VHS field "AssigneeEmail will display the email address of whomever you select as the "JobAssignee"
You can hide this field in your normal view, but have it displayed in the gallery view to declutter your view.
