Help

Re: Remove duplicates in look up field

3590 0
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Mathias_Elmose
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

I’m a big fan of look-ups but I would really like to be able to remove records the occur more than one time. Is there a way to do that?

110 Replies 110
Jordan_Feinstei
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Would love this feature too!

Josh_Martin1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

This would solve a big problem for us. The user @David_Krizan posted a screenshot that would solve all our problems. It’s been several years and we haven’t had any movement on this topic.

Come on Airtable, throw me a freakin’ switch! I (and many others) have been asking for this for over 3 years now! There’s been a US presidential election and a global pandemic in the interim, and all we’re asking for here is a wee little switch that does the ARRAYUNIQUE() function.

In case y’all forgot…
image

F-Law_IT
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

In the last two days I’ve implemented about six instances of the whole lookup—>rollup—>automated multiselect field. At an overhead of extra fields and at least two automations per.

Seems there are a bunch of other commonsense features that are missing, and complained of for just as long… :triumph:

(Some of which mirror this one, in that you need to use this trick to work around them. Like teasing items out of a multiselect into discrete single selects, so you can generate a kanban; rather than being able to specify which value in multi-select to use as the key when creating the stacked view…)

F-Law_IT
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Is it correct that the rollup & automated entry on update workaround only functions for entering items into a choice select field, but not into a multiple link field? Even if the string matches when manually typing it into the link field?

Like so:

airtable4

If it matters, the Entry Grid is pulling from the Sync Grid in their mutual origin base and they are both sync’d to this destination base.

The project here is adapting Airtable’s sample “legal analysis” template so each instance of the template can draw upon a common source base relating points of law to their supporting cases and code sections.

The original discussion of this technique was talking about input to linked item fields, not choice fields, so I’m not sure what’s up with the behavior I’m seeing. I did have to use SUBSTITUTE(ARRAYJOIN(ARRAYUNIQUE(values)), '"', '') in the rollup to strip the quotation marks that appear when manipulating sync’d data, as opposed to just ARRAYUNIQUE(values) – does that have something to do with it?

The log appears to indicate permission errors, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense…

"Updating the record failed due to insufficient permissions.
Learn how to fix common issues…

You first, Airtable.

Kevin_Moreau
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

I need this as well. Anyone knows if this feature is planned for a future update or has it been ignored all this time?

Michael_Nations
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

The lack of this feature has been a major headache for the past couple of days. There is no adequate workaround. Sure would be nice to be able to toggle a unique lookup like @David_Krizan proposed.

Varun_Devatha
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Still facing this problem 3.5 years since the original post. After seeing the number of people requesting a fix for so long, I hope Airtable is considering prioritizing this feature. @Adam_Minich

Andy_Seo
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 this feature would greatly benefit our organization as well, seems like a very intuitive thing to implement.

Philip_Loyd1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 on the request for @David_Krizan 's proposed solution to add an “Only display unique linked records” switch here. :slightly_smiling_face:

Maciej_Smola
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 from me also! It would help greatly

Michael_Parker
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

+1 it’s kinda ridiculous at this point

Omar_Lataoui
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 for that one !!!

Sara_Shaffer1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 For this useful switch!!

It’s a bug in Airtable.

But you can get the desired effect by creating a rollup field instead of a lookup field, and using the formula:

ARRAYUNIQUE(values)

Alex_Hanan
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Please airtable add this feature!!

Airtable employees do not see these messages. Be sure to send your feature requests to support@airtable.com.

In the meantime, you can achieve similar functionality by creating a rollup field with the formula:

ARRAYUNIQUE(values)

Yago_Stecher1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Maybe people should read the case before suggesting Arrayunique, which is not a solution (you don't have linked records)

I'd love to see this feature (a "display only unique linked records" toggle)

Forever bumping this thread, 1612 days after it was posted

JPatGP
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1. This is pretty basic. I agree that the duplicates seem more like a bug than a feature - I guess maybe there's a use case where that would be helpful but I can't think of one. Adam Minich's workaround on page 3 seems like the best option, but still isn't great.

sdnicolello
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Just thought I would add myself to the dozens of users requesting the very simple solution of allowing us to filter out duplicates from lookup fields. 

Very disheartening as a relatively new enterprise account manager that this functionality is not available, and that is has been requested for 3.5 years with no response from Airtable.