Skip to main content

Dependencies in linked records

A

Hi everyone, I am new to Airtable and I have been stuck on this for a while now, basically what I need is:

  1. A Products table for thousands of products
  2. These products can be grouped into 10 main categories
  3. There are a few dozen sub-categories under each main categories

What I would like to achieve is, each time when I am adding a new product record, I can select the main categories drop down menu, and after that only those sub-categories related to that main categories will show in the sub-category drop down menu

I am totally lost here, please help.

Thanks in advance.

Anson

    4 replies

    JonathanBowen
    Forum|alt.badge.img+18

    Hi @Anson_Au-Yeung - you can’t do dependent dropdowns in Airtable, I’m afraid, but my recommendation for a workaround is this:

    Build a categories/subcategories table:

    The first field is a formula which concatenates the category and subcategory name.

    Then in your products table you can link a product to the categories table and lookup the category and subcategory:

    A
    Justin_Barrett
    2 people like this
    • A
      Anson_Au-Yeung
    • Justin_Barrett
      Justin_Barrett
    A
    Forum|alt.badge.img+15

    Hi Anson,

    What you are referring to is dynamic variable conditions for linked record fields.

    Airtable rolled out “Dynamic Variables” to their automation “Find Records”. It enables you to set a condition as dynamic.

    IF this were to be rolled out to the the linked record field type, you could accomplish this.
    This functionality would look through values in the destination table and filter the linked record options for only those records which match those conditions on the table being worked on.

    please be sure to email this to support@airtable.com to push them on this linked record feature

    A
    • Anson_Au-Yeung
    • Author
    • New Participant
    • 2 replies
    • April 15, 2021
    JonathanBowen wrote:

    Hi @Anson_Au-Yeung - you can’t do dependent dropdowns in Airtable, I’m afraid, but my recommendation for a workaround is this:

    Build a categories/subcategories table:

    The first field is a formula which concatenates the category and subcategory name.

    Then in your products table you can link a product to the categories table and lookup the category and subcategory:


    Thank you Jonathan, I’ll have a crack at it, cheers!!

    Anson

    A
    • Anson_Au-Yeung
    • Author
    • New Participant
    • 2 replies
    • April 15, 2021
    Allen_Moldovan wrote:

    Hi Anson,

    What you are referring to is dynamic variable conditions for linked record fields.

    Airtable rolled out “Dynamic Variables” to their automation “Find Records”. It enables you to set a condition as dynamic.

    IF this were to be rolled out to the the linked record field type, you could accomplish this.
    This functionality would look through values in the destination table and filter the linked record options for only those records which match those conditions on the table being worked on.

    please be sure to email this to support@airtable.com to push them on this linked record feature


    Dear Allen,

    Thanks a lot for letting me know, I’ll send them an email for sure.

    Cheers!!

    Anson

    Reply


    Most helpful members this week

    Terms & Conditions