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Remove duplicates in look up field

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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
UNIX_TELEFONICA
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 for me too! This would be a very interesting feature to implement.

albertineq
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 this feature seems necessary.

Airtable folks, please post a workaround here if there is one available. Thanks!

Mar_Castro
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

+1 pretty please!! I have the same problem and I can’t find a workaround.

Mark_Sorenson
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1. This seems like one of those low effort/high delight features. Seems like an easy win for the product team. Let’s keep this thread fresh!

Sean_Christense
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

+1 for me as well! I’ve had multiple use cases where this comes up. Thanks!

Oliver_Holtz
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

I know I posted in this topic before, but I keep running into this annoying problem. Structuring my research database would be so much easier if it wasn’t for this issue. Why would you ever want to have duplicates in a lookup field?

I agree that the Airtable engineers dropped the ball with this one, and sadly, they seem to be unresponsive to user feedback like the comments in this thread.

There is one partial workaround to this dilemma, but it doesn’t provide the full functionality of lookup fields (which have now become clickable items in Airtable):

Sticker_ninja
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Would be great to have this feature.

Adam_Minich
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Hello community!

Adam from the Airtable customer support team here. I had an Airtable user reach out with a link to this community post. While I can’t speak to a specific timeframe for when this feature might be available I have a workaround that may help.

I used the Recipe, Ingredients, and food type example from earlier in the thread. Also, you will need to have some comfort with our Automations feature in order to use this method:

Although it doesn’t resolve the underlying issue, I found this to be very useful.

Thanks for posting!

It IS a workaround, but it’s not very scalable, as creating 3 additional fields and an automation for what is essentially a field-level filter is not a particularly elegant solution. And then good luck trying to explain that workflow to a non-experienced user. The simplest solution is to not make users think or create a Rube Goldberg machine to do something that really should be a no-brainer.

And this also goes for linked records on the same table. Please give us a simple switch to allow the linkage to apply to both records. For example, if I have a Software table and have a same-table linked record field called Integrations, if I use this field to link Airtable to Zapier, I’d want an option (at the field-level) to make this a two-way linkage so that Zapier is also linked to Airtable in this instance.

Tom_Gale
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 really need this feature…

Maria_Robertson
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Here to join the party, I’ve also just come across this need. Trying to organise references and research for individual animal species, but view easily overall content within their families.
Having this feature would be the final puzzle piece.

Steven_Benders
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

+1 to this feature too.

Jonathan_Slavut
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 to the above, this is a sorely needed filter

Simon_Damborg1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+100000 to the above… been waiting for this for a loooong while.

Laure_Aimoz
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 to this feature too.

Jayna_Fey
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 to this feature - very much needed.

Taylor_Johnson1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

+1 this would solve a lot of issues and prevent the need to use hacky workarounds that aren’t scalable

Adding my +1. This feature prevents our organization from really using this as it would be integral to a lot of the tables we would need to create. The current workaround is not feasible at scale.