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Using Formula in a Synced Base using Data from Source Base

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James_Hall2
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

I have a “Source” base and a “Second” base. I want to do calculations in the “Second” base using data from the “Source”.

The problem is that the data comes from a lookup in a table of the “Source” base. This seems to come forward as text not as a number so I get errors in response to the calculation.

Bringing the data forward from the 2 original tables in the “Source” base doesn’t work since they need to be synchronised into one record.

I need to do this because I do not want to do this work in the original database - which is already too complicated. I also want to keep it away from other users.

Help please?

2 Replies 2

This is one of the many bugs in Airtable, but they are uninterested in fixing this bug, according to conversations I have had with the support team about this bug. You can try your luck with them by sending an email to support@airtable.com to tell them how important it is to you that they fix this bug. At the very least, they should always be hearing from people about how their bugs are hurting people’s usage of the platform.

You might be able to find relief by using a rollup field instead of a lookup field, but I haven’t tested this myself yet. In your original table, create a rollup field using the formula values and see if that works in your destination table.

Thanks for the advice. Learning as I go and come a long way in 6 months! Will try the rollup solution and see how that does it.

I will email support@ just to register the issue. It seems a pretty major failure to me. I imagine there may be some fundamental architectural limitation to solving this!