Limiting linked record selection to a view in Airtable

Linked records in Airtable overview

Linked records connect records so you can have the right context within a table or across various tables within a base. They’re how you model relationships between tables without losing sight of what’s connected. You can learn more about linked records here.

Views help you work with the same table in different ways. In a task tracker, you might use one view for everything due this week, another for completed work, and another for overdue items.

What “Limit record selection to a view” does:

• When you turn on Limit record selection to a view, you’re narrowing which records people can pick when they link rows—usually in the linked record picker, and in forms when selection is limited there too. That keeps choices focused and makes picking faster, especially in shared bases or public forms.

• It doesn’t replace base permissions. If someone can read a table, this setting doesn’t hide linked record data from them everywhere—it changes selection, not visibility across the whole base.

A few important notes:

• Picker-first: The setting limits record selection in the picker (and related form behavior). It doesn’t cap how many links a cell can hold, and other workflows can still change links depending on your setup (for example, some automation or copy and paste cases—similar to what we cover in the FAQ on multiple links).

• Order and layout: When a view limit is on, the view you choose can affect which records appear, their order, and the fields shown in the picker. When it’s off, the picker’s default layout and ordering for that table usually follow the first grid view in the linked table—not whichever grid you happen to have open. In Interfaces, record picking can follow different rules, so what you see there may not match the base grid.

• Not a cross-table display filter: This setting doesn’t control how linked records look in your table based on another table’s view, and it doesn’t restyle or “filter away” linked records in cells based on a different view’s configuration.

Limiting linked record selection to a view in Airtable

1. Open your Airtable homepage.

2. Open the base that you want to update.

3. Create a view in the original table—hosting the linked records—with a filter that only displays the options you want visible as linked record field options when looking at the secondary table.

4. Edit the linked record field.

5. Toggle on Limit record selection to a view.

6. Click the ˅ "Select a view" icon and select your newly created view.

7. Click Save.  

   1. After updating your filters, only records in that view are visible when collaborators try to add any to the table’s linked record field.

Limiting linked record selection to a view setup example

In this example, a small start-up company is tracking some bugs in an "Issues" table. The base contains another table where employee information resides. We want to assign an engineering employee to each issue that is filed via a linked record field, but currently, all of the employees show up in the record picker.

1. Create a filtered view - This filtered view in the "Employees" table will be used to limit the record selection in the "Issues" table.

2. Turn on the "Limit record selection to a view" option - Now, we need to limit the record selection to the view we just created in the "Employees" table.

3. Linked record options limited to selected view - The record selection picker will now only show employee records that reside in the "Engineering" view on the "Employees" table.

FAQs