Set up a link to another table and a lookup field but it doesn't automatically do the lookup

[Amy_Mustoe]

I set up a customers table with an email address and job title field (blank). Have another table with email address and job title field, linked the tables and trying to look up the job title in table to and populate table one and it only works if I click into the field and search and manually do this. I’m sure there is a better way. Thanks!

[Justin_Barrett]

Welcome to the community, @Amy_Mustoe! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: When you create a linked record field, you’re not linking one full table to another full table. What you’re doing is creating the means to link individual records between tables. It’s a very different paradigm than a spreadsheet, where you can refer to any table and any range of data in that other table without much effort. In Airtable—and in most database systems—it’s all about the relationship between records, not their container table structures, and as such it requires a shift in thinking when building tables to manage those records.

If there is something specific that you want, could you describe it in greater detail? For now, don’t get into the weeds of which tables the data is on. Think about data relationships and how you want to manage those relationships, and we can help guide you into a structure that would work for your use case.