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Selecting options from another linked table

D
  • DNO
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Hi,

First issue
I have linked a ‘products’ table and an ‘orders’ table. The products table lists the items but some of the items have multiple choices (such as colours, sizes and finishes). When the product is selected in the orders table, the options are grouped together and not selectable (i.e. it is a mirror of the original contents rather than a dropdown which is unique to the entry on the orders table and doesn’t change the main products data). I want to be able to select the specific options for each product on the orders table without having to create multiple products based on colours, sizes and finishes. I suspect it’s a formula or other method rather than just linking but I haven’t been able to find an answer online (as there are too many solutions for linking and I’m probably using the wrong terminology for my issue). Any ideas how to resolve?

Second issue
This is not as urgent but it would be really handy if certain products were selectable based on other fields in orders table. For example, if a product is marked as country specific in the products table, then it would not appear in the orders table to select if the client was based in a different country.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Best answer by ScottWorld

Welcome to the community, @DNO!

Unfortunately, neither of these are possible with Airtable’s native functionality because Airtable doesn’t offer dynamic updating of value lists nor dynamic updating of conditional filters.

You could write a custom Javascript app using the Scripting app to accomplish both of these things, but that requires coding skills.

For your 1st issue, Airtable can’t dynamically change a multi-select field’s options based on a selection in another field. Even if you created a many-to-many relationship to create an entirely separate table of line items, you still wouldn’t be able to dynamically change the multi-select field option based on the product chosen.

You would need to have ALL of your options for ALL of your products combined together into ONE multi-select field, which is probably what you currently have setup in the Products table.

(You also can’t mirror multi-select fields’ options across tables, so you’d need to recreate the multi-select in all tables.)

But as you mentioned, it might be easier to just create multiple products based on colors, sizes, and finishes.

Your 2nd issue also cannot be solved, because Airtable doesn’t offering conditional filtering of values based on a field’s value. This is one of my all-time top feature requests for Airtable, and I encourage you to email support@airtable.com to request this.

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ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
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  • March 5, 2021

Welcome to the community, @DNO!

Unfortunately, neither of these are possible with Airtable’s native functionality because Airtable doesn’t offer dynamic updating of value lists nor dynamic updating of conditional filters.

You could write a custom Javascript app using the Scripting app to accomplish both of these things, but that requires coding skills.

For your 1st issue, Airtable can’t dynamically change a multi-select field’s options based on a selection in another field. Even if you created a many-to-many relationship to create an entirely separate table of line items, you still wouldn’t be able to dynamically change the multi-select field option based on the product chosen.

You would need to have ALL of your options for ALL of your products combined together into ONE multi-select field, which is probably what you currently have setup in the Products table.

(You also can’t mirror multi-select fields’ options across tables, so you’d need to recreate the multi-select in all tables.)

But as you mentioned, it might be easier to just create multiple products based on colors, sizes, and finishes.

Your 2nd issue also cannot be solved, because Airtable doesn’t offering conditional filtering of values based on a field’s value. This is one of my all-time top feature requests for Airtable, and I encourage you to email support@airtable.com to request this.

Databaser
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  • Databaser
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  • DNO
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  • March 5, 2021
ScottWorld wrote:

Welcome to the community, @DNO!

Unfortunately, neither of these are possible with Airtable’s native functionality because Airtable doesn’t offer dynamic updating of value lists nor dynamic updating of conditional filters.

You could write a custom Javascript app using the Scripting app to accomplish both of these things, but that requires coding skills.

For your 1st issue, Airtable can’t dynamically change a multi-select field’s options based on a selection in another field. Even if you created a many-to-many relationship to create an entirely separate table of line items, you still wouldn’t be able to dynamically change the multi-select field option based on the product chosen.

You would need to have ALL of your options for ALL of your products combined together into ONE multi-select field, which is probably what you currently have setup in the Products table.

(You also can’t mirror multi-select fields’ options across tables, so you’d need to recreate the multi-select in all tables.)

But as you mentioned, it might be easier to just create multiple products based on colors, sizes, and finishes.

Your 2nd issue also cannot be solved, because Airtable doesn’t offering conditional filtering of values based on a field’s value. This is one of my all-time top feature requests for Airtable, and I encourage you to email support@airtable.com to request this.


Thanks @ScottWorld for the quick and detailed response. I’ve only been using Airtable for a week and I’ve been really impressed with it so far. It’s a bit disappointing that there isn’t a native solution to the two issues but I might consider getting some consultancy to write some code for these and a few other items as I was originally going to go for a custom database before trying out Airtable.

I’ll certainly email support re the second issue as it seems an easy thing to implement.

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8805 replies
  • March 5, 2021
DNO wrote:

Thanks @ScottWorld for the quick and detailed response. I’ve only been using Airtable for a week and I’ve been really impressed with it so far. It’s a bit disappointing that there isn’t a native solution to the two issues but I might consider getting some consultancy to write some code for these and a few other items as I was originally going to go for a custom database before trying out Airtable.

I’ll certainly email support re the second issue as it seems an easy thing to implement.


You’re welcome! Glad I could help! :slightly_smiling_face:

Yes, some custom JavaScript code would make this possible for you in Airtable — you wouldn’t be able to change the actual interface of Airtable itself with your JavaScript code, but you would end up doing your data entry within the scripting app itself.

But be sure to email Airtable Support at support@airtable.com about these issues, because I really think that these 2 features could radically improve Airtable.

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