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How to sort a table by a priority defined in a linked record?

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voratimao
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

I have read multiple posts on the subject, but none seem to quite answer my newbie questions.

I have 2 tables: Animal and Priority. Animal table contains a list of animals and a link to a list of priorities in Priority table. The animals are grouped by Priority, which automatically sorts by Priority Name in alphabetical order. However, what I want is to sort by Priority Order. I’ve tried sorting by Lookup Fields, but that does not change the ordering.

Basically, I want to see a list of animals ordered from Must Have, Nice to Have, Undecided, and Definitely Not.

Animal Table
airtable-animal

Priority Table
airtable-priority

My workaround is to use a formula in the first column in Priority table to combine Order and Name like this:
airtable-priority-workaround-formular

Animal Workaround Table
airtable-animal-workaround

Sadly this makes the tables very hard to read. And I have many more tables that require this type of grouping and ordering. Is there a way to accomplish what I want without using the formula showing “1 - Must Have”, etc.?

Thanks in advance!

4 Replies 4

Hi @voratimao
Can you just group by Order(from Priority)?

image

I can, but it won’t read nicely. It will just show number 1 instead of Must Have.

Can your priority table have a single-select field to represent the priority? Set the order of the choices in the field configuration. Then have a lookup of the single-select, and sort by the single-select.

I updated the priority per your suggestion. The first column (the unique column) can’t be updated to single-select, so I updated the Priority Name to single-select instead.
airtable-priority-single-select-table

I ordered the options the way I wanted here:
airtable-priority-single-select

Unfortunately, it still sorts Animal table in alphabetical order, not by the order of the single-select field.
airtable-animal-single-select