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I have a list of video assets that I was originally tracking in Google Sheets. I have three sheets/tables- the first table has the main data and the following tables include tags for the videos. All the records on all three tables are the same, they just have different tags. I couldn’t link the records in Sheets and so I was manually updating the records with the tags. Now I’ve discovered Airtable and this would have made my life a million times easier. So, I need to convert those other tables into a new field and this will solve the issue of this table being too big (too many records).

Because I was using Sheets, on the tags sheets, each tag is a column/field. It should just be 1 field that is multiple select that I just choose which tag applies to that video. I’ve converted one table to single select and fixed the labels, but now I need for those single select fields to all combine into one field that can become a linked record. Do I use rollup? I really don’t know what to do.

I could go through and individually pull those tags into that one field, but there are over 500 records and I don’t have the time to do that. Help!

Best answer by ScottWorld

Welcome to the community, @Sydnie_Russian!

Lucky for you, there is a very simple way to convert all of those individual fields into a single multi-select field.

All you need to do is create one formula field that combines all of those field values together with commas in between each field value.

So your formula field would look something like this:

{HR} & "," & {Management} & "," & {Production} & "," & {Ask A Painter} & "," & {Sales/ Marketing}

You would just keep building onto that formula with all of your field names. And separate all of them with commas.

The result of your formula might display a bunch of commas in a row for any of your fields that are empty, but that’s okay.

When you’re done building your formula so that it includes all of your fields, then you can just convert your field from a formula field to a multi-select field. Airtable will automatically take each comma separated value and make it a multi-select option — and it will choose the right selections for each record.

You can do a similar conversion for whichever text field you want to link to the master table. You can only link to another table based on the other table’s primary field (the first column). So take a text field in your current table that matches the values in the primary field of the other table — and then convert the field from a text field to a “link to another record” field.

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ScottWorld
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  • July 7, 2020

Welcome to the community, @Sydnie_Russian!

Lucky for you, there is a very simple way to convert all of those individual fields into a single multi-select field.

All you need to do is create one formula field that combines all of those field values together with commas in between each field value.

So your formula field would look something like this:

{HR} & "," & {Management} & "," & {Production} & "," & {Ask A Painter} & "," & {Sales/ Marketing}

You would just keep building onto that formula with all of your field names. And separate all of them with commas.

The result of your formula might display a bunch of commas in a row for any of your fields that are empty, but that’s okay.

When you’re done building your formula so that it includes all of your fields, then you can just convert your field from a formula field to a multi-select field. Airtable will automatically take each comma separated value and make it a multi-select option — and it will choose the right selections for each record.

You can do a similar conversion for whichever text field you want to link to the master table. You can only link to another table based on the other table’s primary field (the first column). So take a text field in your current table that matches the values in the primary field of the other table — and then convert the field from a text field to a “link to another record” field.

S
ScottWorld wrote:

Welcome to the community, @Sydnie_Russian!

Lucky for you, there is a very simple way to convert all of those individual fields into a single multi-select field.

All you need to do is create one formula field that combines all of those field values together with commas in between each field value.

So your formula field would look something like this:

{HR} & "," & {Management} & "," & {Production} & "," & {Ask A Painter} & "," & {Sales/ Marketing}

You would just keep building onto that formula with all of your field names. And separate all of them with commas.

The result of your formula might display a bunch of commas in a row for any of your fields that are empty, but that’s okay.

When you’re done building your formula so that it includes all of your fields, then you can just convert your field from a formula field to a multi-select field. Airtable will automatically take each comma separated value and make it a multi-select option — and it will choose the right selections for each record.

You can do a similar conversion for whichever text field you want to link to the master table. You can only link to another table based on the other table’s primary field (the first column). So take a text field in your current table that matches the values in the primary field of the other table — and then convert the field from a text field to a “link to another record” field.


So because all three of my tables’ primary fields are the same, I can’t link them? Should I create new tables to fix this? With the primary fields being the combined tags field?

Pretty much what I need to happen is to take the new combined fields and make them a new field on the master table and then I can get rid of the other tables

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
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  • July 7, 2020
Sydnie_Russian wrote:

So because all three of my tables’ primary fields are the same, I can’t link them? Should I create new tables to fix this? With the primary fields being the combined tags field?

Pretty much what I need to happen is to take the new combined fields and make them a new field on the master table and then I can get rid of the other tables


You can just copy and paste the entire column from one table to the other. As long as your records are in the exact same order in both tables.

S
ScottWorld wrote:

You can just copy and paste the entire column from one table to the other. As long as your records are in the exact same order in both tables.


It looks like I am missing 20 records on both of the sub sheets. So that won’t work. Any ideas on how to find the records I’m missing so that I can fix that?

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
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  • July 7, 2020
Sydnie_Russian wrote:

It looks like I am missing 20 records on both of the sub sheets. So that won’t work. Any ideas on how to find the records I’m missing so that I can fix that?


If you’re missing records, then you probably didn’t bring them in originally. Sounds like you’ll need to do some cleanup work to bring everything into order. But you’re getting there!

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