Linked Record Field Names

[Brad_Johns]

I’m having a bit of trouble managing complex bases that heavily rely on linked records across tables. I’m finding that, as I develop a project or a record keeping methodology I tend to change field names to help myself and my teams keep information conceptually well defined. This becomes problematic when a renamed field is a linked-record field type. Because the newly edited field names from one table do not update the linked-record field name in the related record/table, that other table can quickly become very confusing and difficult to relate to.
Of course this can be corrected by carefully managing names across tables manually - when one field name is changed, the editor carefully changes all linked-record references to it across the base - but it is starting to become a whack-a-mole problem for me.

• Can anyone relate to this problem and/or provide insights on how to get past it?

• Would it be a reasonable feature request that the names of linked-record fields are inextricably linked across a table either by default or by selection?

[kuovonne]

Shane_Roach:

It would seem the moment you rename a table, that table’s title would be ‘echoed’ immediately throughout all linked records reference column titles.

The name of a linked record field does not have to match the name of the linked table. In fact, if you have multiple links between the same table, it is best if the fields have names to differentiate the different roles of each linked field. For example, a base could have a [People] table and a [Project] table with two linked records between them. One linked record field could hold the {manager} of the project. Another linked record field could hold the {team members} for the project. Note that neither linked record field is named after the table. Changing the name of [People] table cannot automatically change the names of the two linked records.