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Creating unique fields for each option in database

A

Hi everyone!

I’m new to using Airtable and curious if anyone can help me out. We’re creating a database to register data from an archaeological excavation. During this excavation, we’ll come across different contexts, so in Airtable we have added these contexts as different options, you can for instance select ‘floor’, ‘wall’, ‘burial’ and then we’ve added several fields that contain descriptions on these contexts/options. Now all of these fields show up for every single context/option. But, for a burial for instance we don’t need the field ‘masonry finish’ or ‘color’. So we’re wondering: is there a way to create unique fields for each option or to disable that certain fields pop up (or can be filled out) when selecting a certain option from the drop-down menu?

Thanks!

3 replies

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8751 replies
  • May 9, 2022

Unfortunately, it is not possible in Airtable to have dynamic value selections like this. Based on posts in this forum, it seems like this is the #1 feature request that most Airtable users have requested over the last 6 years.

Be sure to email support@airtable.com to let them know how much you would like this feature to be added to the product, although they are highly unresponsive to user feature requests so I wouldn’t hold your breath on this feature ever coming to the product.

As it stands now, the only way to get what you’re looking for would be to create completely different fields for each option, and then use the form view to conditionally hide or show fields based on the criteria that you choose in other fields.

A
  • Ahoffeli
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • May 9, 2022
ScottWorld wrote:

Unfortunately, it is not possible in Airtable to have dynamic value selections like this. Based on posts in this forum, it seems like this is the #1 feature request that most Airtable users have requested over the last 6 years.

Be sure to email support@airtable.com to let them know how much you would like this feature to be added to the product, although they are highly unresponsive to user feature requests so I wouldn’t hold your breath on this feature ever coming to the product.

As it stands now, the only way to get what you’re looking for would be to create completely different fields for each option, and then use the form view to conditionally hide or show fields based on the criteria that you choose in other fields.


Hi ScottWorld!

Thanks so much for your quick reply. I was indeed already thinking that the feature simply didn’t exist on Airtable. Thanks for clarifying this and hopefully they will indeed enable this in the future…

TheTimeSavingCo
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Hm, if you’re open to inputting data via forms, you could maybe set up forms that showed input fields based on selected values?

e.g. Only show Field A, B, C, if Field 1 = “Burial”
or Only show Field A, C, D if Field 1 = “Another Instance”

I’m curious, would it make sense for each instance to be it’s own table since they each appear to have their own rather unique fields?

Adam, Consultant @ The Time Saving Co

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