Ability to automatically sort linked records

[ScottWorld]

We really would love the ability to AUTOMATICALLY sort the related list of linked records.

We know that we can MANUALLY sort the related list of linked records, but we would love the ability to AUTOMATICALLY sort.

Oh, and equally important, we’re not just looking for the ability to automatically sort linked records alphabetically. We’re looking for the ability to automatically sort linked records by ANY value in their respective table.

So, for example:

I am creating a large travel itinerary for a tour company where my main table is “Countries” and my secondary table is “Cities”.

I have linked each “country” record in the “Country” table to multiple different “cities” in the “Cities” table.

But each “city” record has a start date & an end date, so there is a natural ordering to the cities. The cities can be ordered chronologically by date. In fact, that is the VERY BEST way for cities to be ordered: chronologically by date.

Back in the “Country” table, each “country” record is linked to multiple “cities” from the “Cities” table.

However, on each “Country” record, Airtable has listed all the “linked cities” in some random order. It seems like Airtable has placed them into a “reverse sort order” of when users added each city to its respective country. But this is of no value to us.

We would like the “linked cities” to be listed chronologically by date for each “country”.

Other database languages, such as FileMaker Pro, have this ability (to automatically sort linked records) natively baked into the program. It would be amazing if Airtable had this same feature! 🙂

Thanks! 🙂

[Kamille_Parks]

Agreed, this would be very useful. It would also be nice to sort Lookups as well.

Sample Use Case:
I have a base to help plan my future vacations. I have a [Trips] table with all the trips I want to go on, and a [Itinerary] table with the events (flight, hotel check-in/out, concerts, etc) associated with each trip.

I’d like the linked records from [Itinerary] to automatically sort by their date/time when displayed in the [Trips] base.

[ScottWorld]

Yep, this is the exact same dilemma that I’m in! :slightly_smiling_face:

[Kiera_Landess]

+1 vote for this feature. Using airtable pro for project management myself, and this is the one thing that everyone still grumbles about and makes this a less efficient tool. Bothersome enough that we’re considering switching products. Please let us know if this is on the roadmap! Thank you!

[Isaac_Googgle]

also need this for mutli select field as well!!!

[ScottWorld]

also need this for mutli select field

This would be nice, too. Multi-select fields can be manually alphabetized by clicking on the “alphabetize” button, but it doesn’t happen automatically.

[Laura_McDonald]

I want this so much. I just spent an hour manually sorting linked records—and those are just the ones I had to do, not the ones I’d really like to do but would take way too long.

[Peter_Berg]

This would be an incredibly useful feature.

[ScottWorld]

My guess is that the sorting of linked records can be automated with either a JavaScript script or by using Integromat’s Array Sort functionality, although I haven’t tested either of these myself yet. (Integromat is a no-code automation platform that has full Airtable support.)

But yeah, this would be great to have it built into Airtable natively.

[ScottWorld]

You can MANUALLY sort linked records with the Batch Update App, but it has to be triggered manually every time you want to sort.

[Paul_Leavitt]

This would be fantastic for me as well. I would like to use Airtable to auto-generate invoices, but the invoice tables is pulling in line items from the hour tracking table in what seems to be a completely random order. I know I could use the batch-reorder app, but that’s a messy solution. I second (fifth?) @ScottWorld’s take on this, and the ability to select what column linked records sort by.