Duplicating Records in Group View only

[Megan_Dunagan]

I am an artist working with various companies in various Markets/Categories (ie: greeting cards, home decor, stationery, and gift).

Some companies are in multiple markets such as greeting cards & gift; whereas other companies just serve one. Think Micheal’s v.s. Hallmark. The former serves multiple markets while the latter is likely just greeting cards (just go with me).

So now that you have the back story, I’d like to be able to Group by Markets/Categories, BUT, I would like a record to duplicate itself in this view to list in BOTH greeting cards and gift. I DON’T want it to be Grouped as “Greeting Cards, Gift” because it could be the only company listed as such.

First screen shot shows my basic table prior to grouping:

Second screen shot shows what it looks like after grouping. I’d like Company 1 to be split (duplicated) into both Gift Bags and then also Party Paper (IN ONLY THIS GROUP VIEW) To be clear: I want Party Paper to be it’s own group without me having to create duplicate listings of the same company.

Is this possible? Thanks!

[Matthew_Billio1]

So you would like the grouping to look like this?

[Megan_Dunagan]

Yes! Is that some Photoshop magic or is there a way to do this? (I’d prefer not to permanently duplicate a row).

[Matthew_Billio1]

lol, yeah, that was some “paint shop” magic… to my knowledge there is no good way to achieve what you are trying to do using the “Group” feature.

So, I agree that this would be nice to be able to do, and hopefully Airtable adds this to their “to-do” list.

However, there is a … somewhat reasonable work around available:

###Create a new table** called *“Category/Market Info”

1. In the new table, name the first field in that table something like "CatName"
2. make sure it has all the values you need.

###Go to your “Attendee Registration” Table

2. Rename your “Category/Market Info” field to something else (“tmp”).

3. Create a new field called "Category/Market Info"
   and make it a linked field to your newly created “Category/Market Info” table.

4. Populate that newly created field with those old values from "tmp"

###Go to your “Category/Market Info” Table
*in this table, you can now at least view all the records linked to each category…

It is not a perfect solution, but you can get results something like this:

[Megan_Dunagan]

Thanks Matthew! This will be great.

[Elias_Gomez_Sai]

You’re doing a Many-to-many relation, and in database modeling this forces you to have an auxiliary table (with those “duplicate” rows -ids of the companies, really-). Airtable allows you to link several records to other, but then you can’t do some things (as you have experienced).

Here you have, now the aux. table is which does the magic. I have created 2 different views, explore the base:

https://airtable.com/shrRPGkbqQevXQMEz

[Megan_Dunagan]

Thank you, Elias! I’ll have to readjust my tables, but I think this will work as intended.

[Matthew_Billiod]

I wish they would fix this so that the user doesn’t have to create another table just to split out that field.

[Rob_Bruce]

Seems like you either un-shared the base or deleted it. Any chance you’d be willing to re-share it?

[Elias_Gomez_Sai]

I’ve deleted it, but it’s something like this:

[HammerOz]

I can’t find a use case for the current grouping implementation. Surely most people are grouping by the select or linked field to get all items under each individual select or link item.

It would be great to have a keep together or group individually option in the group by dialog.

eg content grouped by platform where item a has multi select values for facebook, video, website

Group header: Website
-item a
GH: Facebook
-item a
GH: Video
-item a

not: Group header = video, facebook, website

• item a