Advanced filtering using conditions

Nowadays, it’s easy to get flooded with too much information, making it hard to know what’s important. To be efficient, you need the ability to filter out irrelevant information—so you can focus on the task at hand.

Airtable is excited to announce the experience of filtering records is now better than ever, with the introduction of advanced filtering with conditions! With advanced filtering, you can create and combine condition groups to deeply customize how your records are filtered, allowing you to create highly specific and organized views for your workflows.

Prerequisites

If you are unfamiliar with the basics of creating conditions to filter through your records, we recommend first reviewing this article. For this guide, we will be using the “Product catalog” template; please feel free to create a copy of the base if you’d like to follow along!

Overview

You can create a condition to filter out records within the view you are currently viewing. A condition group is a group of conditions connected logically together with a conjunction ( "And" & "Or" ).

This article will cover how to use conjunctions to logically connect condition groups with other condition groups.

Nesting condition groups

So, to recap: a condition group is a combination of conditions connected together with a conjunction. In this article,we created a new condition group whenever we joined multiple conditions together using either of the two logical conjunctions (“And” & “Or”).

Now let's expand on this concept: You can use conjunctions to combine and connect condition groups nested within other condition groups. Now the sky's the limit, and advanced filtering really takes off and flies.

Combining conditional groups allows you to start building more and more complex filters. For example, we can create a rule to “Show chairs, AND those chairs must be in stock OR show furniture made of reclaimed wood”:

We strongly recommend playing with conditional groups as you read along. Advanced filtering is a feature with a delightfully mix-and-match feel that is best learned by doing.

Creating new condition groups

There are two ways to create a new condition group. The first way is from the first level condition group, by clicking on the “Add condition group” button:

This will add an additional condition group nested within the first level condition group we’ve been using up to this point:

The second way to create a new condition group is from within a second level nested condition group:

This will create a nested condition group on the third level. You can nest condition groups for a maximum depth of three levels:

You cannot nest a group any deeper than the third level, as is represented in the greyed out option in the below image:

Though three levels are the maximum depth level possible, you can still achieve complex and precise filtering by combining conjunctions with multiple levels of condition groups:

Adding and removing conditions from a condition group

You can easily add and remove conditions from groups by clicking on the pull handle for that condition, then dragging and dropping the condition into the desired condition group:

You can also add a new condition directly into a specific group by using that condition group’s dropdown menu:

Rearranging nested condition groups

Like dragging and dropping conditions, you can also drag and drop entire condition groups to change their arrangement and level of nesting (a.k.a. depth). To rearrange a condition group click on the pull handle for that group and drag and drop it where desired:

Note that since you can only nest groups up to three levels, you will not be able to nest groups any deeper than that while dragging and dropping (i.e., if you attempt to nest a group within a second-level group):

Removing condition groups

You can easily remove any condition group, regardless of its nested level, by clicking the trashcan icon next to the group you’d like to remove:

FAQs

Where are advanced filters currently integrated within the Product?

You can currently access advanced filtering within the view filtering menu(as shown above), record coloring, and conditional form fields.

What if I try adding a condition to a nested condition group and make a mistake? Is there a way to revert to the original?

You can easily rearrange, add, or remove conditions from any of your condition groups. If you are in the process of building a new view and are playing around with filters, we recommend creating a duplicate view. Within your new duplicate view, you can change filtering without affecting any ongoing workflows or other collaborators.

What are best practices in migrating my current filter configurations to advanced filter options?

Advanced filters will not change any of the filtering conditions you previously had set up in your views. However, you will be able to add new condition groups—the world is now your oyster!
Using our product example above, imagine a customer comes in asking for either a:

1. A living room piece, OR alternatively,
2. Something made of wood OR above a price point of $3,500 per unit AND is in stock now.

Advanced filters can help you quickly get to the data you need. Here is a visual for the scenario we just described:

Will I be able to copy view configurations that have advanced filters?

Yes, you can copy a configuration from one view to another within the same table. Either follow the procedure described in this article or click on the “Copy from another view” option at the bottom of the filter menu:

Related video content