Remove duplicates in look up field

[Mathias_Elmose]

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?

[Mathias_Elmose]

That’s a great idea for a solution and exactly my thought @David_Krizan

The Ingridients example is great to illustrate the problem when the same ingrident appears multiple times.

[Oliver_Holtz]

I just want to chime in here to say that I have exactly the same problem. I have duplicates in lookup fields but can’t use rollup because I want to have the links to the actual records. Really, I don’t see why one would want to have duplicates in a lookup field ever.

If someone has figured out a workaround for this it would also be much appreciated!

[Justin_Spooner]

Oliver_Holtz:

to say that I have exactly the same problem. I have duplicates in lookup fields but can’t use rollup because I want to have the links to the actual records. Really, I don’t see why one would want to have dup

Yes, cant find a fix for this. If anyone has any ideas let us know! Would love to see the platform updated to address this.

[David_Krizan]

Seriously Airtable, just add an “Only display unique linked records” switch when someone selects a Linked Record field from a Lookup field. This would be so useful and seemingly so easy to do because (1) y’all would know when a Linked Record field is being selected from a Lookup field, and (2) this should just be a simple filter.

Simple Mockup of Proposed Solution

I absolutely love that Linked Record fields can be used in Lookup fields, but I have NEVER ONCE wanted duplicate linked records displayed in a Lookup field, as any redundancy negates the utility of such. This problem comes up frequently and prevents me from doing some very useful things with my data.

[Rasha]

I’ve been keeping an eye on this for some time. Has anyone found a workaround or come across a product update I’m not aware of? It’s rather frustrating.

[Noel_Jee]

I’m looking for the same solution but there doesn’t seem to be a solution. Does Airtable actually go through these forums?

[Remy_Margerum]

You can make an instant Zap in Zapier that Zaps the text from the Rollup to a Linked field as a workaround for this for now.

[Joe_Elmendorf]

I ran into this problem too.
Here is my solution for the recipe example:
Make a hidden field in the Ingredients table that is a formula that duplicates the value of Ingredients -> Type, let’s call it “Type String”, then do a Lookup ARRAYUNIQUE() of Ingredients > Type String and it will work.

[David_Pethick]

This is a “must have” feature. It’s crazy to have the same link replicates several times. It’s just a filter over the top (underlying data can still be there) to make several of my views so much more valuable to users.

[David_Walters]

Agreed. This is a “must have” for me.