Replacing values with other values in drop down

[Levon_Yemenjyan]

Hi. Kinda new to Airtable so I hope my question is not dumb.

What I need to do is to make a serial number generator of a kind. The serial number consists of 3 two-digit elements each element indicates a variable. So what I need is a document, where there are 3 dropdowns: Drop down1, Dropdown 2, Dropdown 3. In those dropdowns, there are 5 text values: Text 1-1 to Text 1-5 in the first drop-down, Text 2-1 to Text 2-5 in second and so on. There must be a numeric value assigned to each text value that the user does not see, so, for example, Text 1-1 is equal to 11, Text 1-2 is 12, Text 2-4 is 24 and so on.

Whenever a user chooses a value from the drop-down the numeric value appears on a cell marked as a complete serial number. If all dropdowns are left blank then it says 000000, if on dropdowns Text Value 1-3, Text Value 2-1 and Text Value 3-3 are selected, than the cell marked Serial number says 132133 and so on. All 6 numbers appear in one cell next to each other.

Does anyone have an idea of how to create something like this in Airtable?

[Kamille_Parks]

If your dropdowns will follow that format (Text 1-1), you can use the following formula:

SUBSTITUTE(IF({Dropdown 1 field}, RIGHT({Dropdown 1 field},3), 00)&IF({Dropdown 2 field}, RIGHT({Dropdown 2 field},3), 00)&IF({Dropdown 3 field}, RIGHT({Dropdown 3 field},3), 00), '-', '')

What the formula is doing is looking at each dropdown, taking only the three characters at the end of the value, and writing them next to each other. If a dropdown is empty it writes ‘00’ instead. Then it substitutes every dash character with nothing to get a 6 digit serial number.

If your dropdowns don’t follow that format, you’ll have to use a formula structure like this:

SWITCH({Dropdown 1 field}, 'Possible value 1', 11, 'Possible value 2', 12, 'Possible value 3', 13)&SWITCH(repeat for second dropdown)&SWITCH(repeat for third dropdown)