Duplicating a table

[cathy_adams]

Hi there. Am wondering if it is possible to duplicate a table and then when I update the original table, the duplicated one is updated as well? I am trying to achieve a scenario where by I have a table holding all the master info for employees - including salary, contact details, etc but want to share a table just showing the contact details with the rest of the team. Thanks

[W_Vann_Hall · Accepted solution]

Not as such — but take a look at creating a shared view link, which gives you the ability to share a read-only view of a table, allowing you to hide certain fields or records as needs.

[cathy_adams]

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. That has totally solved my problem. Cheers!

[Steven_Zhang1]

@W_Vann_Hall I am curious- are there valid use cases you’ve seen of duplicating a table, is the “correct answer” almost always to create a view?

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

@Steven_Zhang1

Unfortunately, @W_Vann_Hall hasn’t been around lately (we miss you, buddy). But I can try to weigh in here for you.

I would argue that duplicating tables should be avoided as much as possible. There are two main reasons for this:

1. You introduce integrity issues - keeping the two tables synced is not always easy, and when they get out of sync, it can become difficult to know which one should be considered correct
2. You lose the power of interconnected data, especially if the duplicate table is in a different base (which is the most common use case)

I can elaborate more on those points later, if it comes to it… but I would say – yes, the “correct answer” is almost always to create a view, rather than duplicate a table.

What is the use case you are considering here? Perhaps you do have a valid case for splitting up data. :man_shrugging:t2:

[Steven_Zhang1]

Thanks @Jeremy_Oglesby! I actually work at Airtable and just wanted to get some user feedback re: duplicating tables vs creating views as we’re looking into improving this space :slightly_smiling_face: .

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Ah, yes… I missed the “Airtable” badge by your username.

Steven_Zhang1:

we’re looking into improving this space

What space is it that you are referring to? Are you referring to the user forums? Or are you referring to some “space” in the Airtable UI / usability concept?

[Steven_Zhang1]

Haha no problem! The latter- looking to improve Airtable UI/usability :slightly_smiling_face:

[paolability]

A use case is different bases referring to the same look-up tables. For example, a list of towns.

I would like this functionality in the suite of bases I’m using to act as covid-19 resource directories (at ascotcovidresources dot org).

I only started using Airtable last weekend. As a database developer, I had hoped to create one base that had a table for each directory and look-up tables of shared lists. I would have then created public views for each directory table (tabs) and share one base link.

Instead I created a base per directory, duplicating look-up tables. I then created a portal page linking to each public view and to each corresponding form.

As I said, only into this a few days. Maybe there’s a better way I could have organised it?

Paola

[laura_kaspick]

my use case is that i have hundreds and hundreds of fields of data.

the fields can be grouped into 3 or 4 categories, but about 10 of the fields are common to all the categories.

i would like each category to be a different tab – not just a different view – because i could easily make 20 different views of each category, and that’s too long of a list to try to sort through and maintain organization

but i can’t have them be separate tabs, because that means that i have to update those same 10 fields across all of those tabs. plus you never know when i might decide that it would actually be good to have an additional field on more than one tab, and now i have to go about adding it rather than it just being there in case i want it (because all fields aren’t shared across all tabs).