Sort by collapsed fields

[Lisa_Wetherby]

I have a list of volunteers that, when I collapse all, clearly shows their hours for the year - see attached.

I would like to sort by this list in order to be able to see who had the most hours this year.

Is that possible? If not - how else can I aggregate the info to get what I need?

Thanks!

~Lisa

[ScottWorld]

Unfortunately, that is not possible. Airtable has given us no way to use summary values in any way whatsoever — we can't sort by them, we can't use them in automations, we can't use them in formulas, etc.

However, it looks like your hours are linked to another table, so you could get what you're looking for from the OTHER TABLE which your records are linked to. In your OTHER TABLE, you can create a ROLLUP FIELD which sums up the values from your hours table.

Your rollup field's formula would be:
SUM(values)

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

[TheTimeSavingCo · Accepted solution]

For that you'll need to have a 'Volunteers' table where each record represents a single volunteer, and then you'd rollup on the 'Hours' field with 'SUM(values)':

Link to base

From your screenshot, it looks like the 'FFN1' field is the one that contains the volunteer information?  If so, you'll need to create a linked field to the 'Volunters' table in this table, and to populate the data quickly you could:
1. Create a new view with no groupings, with the FFN1 field and the linked field to the Volunteers table visible
2. Click the field header of the FFN1 field, which selects the entire column
3. Hit CMD/CTRL + C
4. Click the field header of the linked field to the Volunteers table
5. Hit CMD/CTRL + V

This will link up all the records, and when you head to the Volunteers table you'll see one record per Volunteer has been created for you

If you've already got a 'Volunteers' table, then instead of using the 'FFN1' field, use a lookup field to the primary field of the 'Volunteers' table instead!

[Lisa_Wetherby]

Perfect - and I was able to add a condition that enabled me to see who had the most hours in 2024, which was my original goal. Thank you & happy Festivus!