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Overrideable Formulae / Default Value

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Daniel_Huggins
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Hi Airtable.

Iโ€™d like the ability to override the contents of formulae-text cells with text of my own. I most commonly use this for record titling/naming. We use Airtable as a meeting/diary manager. So if we put in the people who attend, the formulate title could be โ€œRoger meets Davidโ€, but we could override that title to become โ€œFinancial Planning Meeting 3โ€, say.

You can think of it as โ€œoverridingโ€ or as โ€œdefaultingโ€ but the point is that there are lots of time when i want formula-based default titles which can be changed to something else later.

11 Comments
Elias_Gomez_Sai
13 - Mars
13 - Mars

You can integrate it into the Formula:

  • Title field: Optional text
  • Final Title field: Formula with something like IF({Title}, {Title}, [Your original formula])

I use this a lot, for instance for Dates.

Daniel_Huggins
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Thanks, I know. But that adds extra complexity and means you have to have to devote extra column space for it.

Justin_Barrett
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Unfortunately itโ€™s not possible to get the behavior youโ€™re seeking. Fields can either be dynamicโ€”driven by formulas, lookups, rollups, etc.โ€”or manually edited. They canโ€™t be both. If youโ€™re coming from spreadsheets, itโ€™s easy to look at the default Grid view of a table and think that field entries are like cells, individually tweakable based on your needs in the moment. However, they just donโ€™t operate that way. You set each field as a certain type, and thatโ€™s how that field behaves for every record (row) of the table. One-off changes to fields arenโ€™t allowed.

Daniel_Huggins
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Thatโ€™s why iโ€™m requesting this feature. Giving the option to make formulas overridable - without extra columns - would be a great quality of life improvement. And i donโ€™t think it would take much in the way of UI to support.

Justin_Barrett
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Sorry. I somehow missed that this was in the product suggestions category. My bad.

Education_Team
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

+1 For this feature. We have the option of defaults now and those can be edited, so it seems like the simple solution would be conditional defaults. This would be a huge help for me!

Education_Team
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Additionally, the possibility of adding multiple rules/conditions to one field would be great (akin to the ability to add several layers to sorting, filtering, or grouping).

I.E.:

Rule 1: If {Scout Troop} is not empty, ={Scout Program}
Rule 2: If {Classroom} is not empty, ={School}+โ€œClassroom Programโ€
Rule 3: If no conditions are met, leave blank

In any of those conditions the field would always be editable in case the default happened to not apply.

Ashish_Dassani
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hi Airtable team,

Is there any update or work around for this feature? Itโ€™s been almost 2 years and itโ€™s strange to see no update on this request or even a suggested workaround.

Please update.

Thanks,
Ashish

Justin_Barrett
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Welcome to the community, @Ashish_Dassani! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: While a handful of folks on this forum are Airtable employees, the vast majority of us are fellow users, so thereโ€™s not guarantee that the actual Airtable team has read your comment. If you want to ask them directly, itโ€™s best to reach out directly to Airtable support.

As far as workarounds go, the one that @Elias_Gomez_Sainz mentioned above is the most common: build everything you wantโ€”including a default/fallback/alternate valueโ€”into the formula itself.

Ashish_Dassani
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Thank you! For sure will try that solution.