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Is it possible to prevent the record with the same name from appearing?

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6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

We could have more than two records with the same name. But Is it possible to prevent the record with the same name from appearing? I hope it will pop up a window to warn me when a same name record is created.

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Airtable deals with record uniqueness under the hood using a randomly generated record ID. You can see this ID using the RECORD_ID() function in a formula field. Aside from that, it doesn’t prevent the creation of records with the same data in the primary field, nor does it provide any mechanisms for alerting the user of such duplications. It’s possible to run an automation on a schedule that executes a script to look for and mark records with duplicate primary field values, but this will obviously eat up a lot of automation runs depending on the schedule chosen.

What method are you using to create the primary field contents? If it’s a formula, the best solution there is to add as much unique data as possible to the formula’s output so that you effectively guarantee unique values, although doing so obviously makes the field contents longer and not as easily consumable at a quick glance.

There should have been some way to resolve it. Unique is an important attribute. I am not sure whether filter could resolve such problem.

I understand your concerns, so I’ll return to the question that I asked in my previous post: what method are you using to create the primary field contents? Are the fields being filled manually? Via an automation? An external tool like Zapier or Integromat? Something else?

I created the primary field contents manually. In fact most of the contents are filled manually…
If there are too many records, I can’t find what whether my new record’s primary field has been filled.

In lieu of running an automation on a schedule, you might consider manually running a script periodically to look for and mark records with duplicate primary field content.

Another option is to use the Dedupe app to find duplicates, keeping in mind that it’s also designed to delete and/or merge duplicate records. You could just skip that part and use it for review only.

Thanks for your advice.