Feature Request: Lookup field type returns unique values

[Josh_Furth]

It would be extremely useful to have the ability to control whether a lookup-type field only returns unique values versus showing the full list of lookup values. For example:

Table 1:
Record A
Record B
Record C

Table 2:
Record X, Category 1, Links to Record A
Record Y, Category 2, Links to Record B
Record Z, Category 2, Links to Record B

If I add a Lookup field to Table 1 showing which categories are in the values linked to these records from Table 2, I get:

Table 1:
Record A, Linked to Table 2: “Record X”, Category Lookup: “Category 1”
Record B, Linked to Table 2: “Record Y, Record Z”, Category Lookup: “Category 2, Category 2”
Record C: Linked to Table 2: “”, Category Lookup: “”

The desired behavior is that this Lookup field would show “Category 2” without the duplicate for Record B in Table 1.

[ScottWorld]

Did you try using the ARRAYUNIQUE function in your Rollup field?

Also, you can check out this workaround here:

Remove duplicates in look up field Ask the community

Hello community! Adam from the Airtable customer support team here. I had an Airtable user reach out with a link to this community post. While I can’t speak to a specific timeframe for when this feature might be available I have a workaround that may help. I used the Recipe, Ingredients, and food type example from earlier in the thread. Also, you will need to have some comfort with our Automations feature in order to use this method: Hope this helps and know that our team is ver…

[Josh_Furth]

Thanks for that suggestion @ScottWorld - I’m going to test out that automation approach now.

I mixed up my nomenclature in the original post (just edited it to correct) - I am hoping to use a Lookup field, not a Rollup Field, so that I can retain the linked fields functionality rather than returning a text string alone.

[Darin_Bellisari]

Sadly ARRAYUNIQUE doesn’t work in a very, very common case:
[Table A] is the table you’re rolling up in
[Table B] you lookup in Table A, and refers to items in [Table C]
[Table C] is the items you want to rollup

In [Table A], if you roll-up [Table C] values in [Table B] (which is the normal case with the rollups being discussed here), then if there are ever MULTIPLE [Table C] items in a SINGLE line in [Table B], then it ends up getting duplicated

Concrete example:
In the [Meals] table, you look up [Dishes], and each dish has multiple [Ingredients]
In the [Meals] table, when you try to ARRAYUNIQUE rollup the [Ingredients] in the [Dishes] for a meal, you encounter this problem.
Suppose one Dish has [Salt] and [Pepper] and another dish JUST has [Salt]; the ARRAYUNIQUE returns “Salt, Pepper, Salt” ← duplicates

Hopefully they’ll figure out a better way of handling this in the future