Indicating a cell is intentionally empty (as opposed to incomplete)?

[Katherine_Vanto]

I’m trying to make an Airtable spreadsheet/database for investment properties that my husband and I own. One of the data sets I want to collect is the amount of taxes we paid since purchasing each property (for each year of ownership, there should be an amount we paid in County taxes and an amount we paid in City taxes. The columns which pertain to property taxes are named as follows: (2017 Tax Paid to County; 2017 Tax Paid to City; 2018 Tax Paid to County; 2018 Tax Paid to City; 2019 Tax Paid to County; 2019 Tax Paid to City)

Clearly, properties we acquired in 2017 will have data in every column (2017 Tax Paid to County; 2017 Tax Paid to City; 2018 Tax Paid to County; 2018 Tax Paid to City; 2019 Tax Paid to County; 2019 Tax Paid to City). Properties we acquired in 2019 won’t have data for 2017 County, 2017 City, 2018 County or 2018 City. I would like to be able to indicate or somehow delineate a cell that is empty because it still needs review vs a cell that is blank because it has no corresponding data. In other words, I’d like to be able to look at the spreadsheet and immediately recognize which cells need my attention (need data). I don’t want to see a blank cell under 2018 Tax Paid to County and then spend time factoring in the purchase year in order to determine if this is an intentionally blank cell or one that needs tending to.

For example, if a home was purchased in 2019, it would be great if there were a way to automatically “grey out” or visually communicate that the related cells are empty by design. They have been completed, even if there sin’t a f 2019 is entered as the year, please automatically make the cells relating to 2018 & 2017 incapable of receiving data (or highlight them in some way to that I automatically know not to gather unnecessary data). In other words, I would like to be able to look at the spreadsheet and know that blank cells represent work that remains to be done (rather than cells that are complete but without data).

Does that make sense?

[Nathalie_Collin]

Hi @Katherine_Vantosh, I believe I understand what you’re trying to do.

I would suggest using views to select only the records that are required for that year.

So as an example, if we were looking at the 2017 Taxes, our filtered view would look like this;

The list of views would then be accessible if you ever wanted to review what you did in previous years.

[Nathalie_Collin]

@Katherine_Vantosh - Another way to visually see an overview of what you require, would be to have a Summary page for all your tax years.

As an example, to determine if you require to do any action for the 2016 taxes, your formula would look like this; IF(IS_BEFORE("2017",Date),"n/a","")

Here’s the base that shows both this formula example as well as the ‘view’ idea as mentioned above.

Airtable

Investment Properties - Airtable

This base was created for demonstration purposes. If you require specific examples or would like an extension of this base, please let me know. Nathalie@VAcePro.com