Limiting linked record selection to a view in Airtable

Linked records in Airtable overview

Linked records are a huge part of the fundamental power of Airtable. They exist to link one record to another record in a way that allows information to be easily accessed across your base from one table to another. Another way to say it would be that linked records represent your data’s relationships within a base. You can learn more about linked records here.

Views allow you to manipulate the information in a table in a way that makes sense for a particular use case. For example, a task tracking table might have 4 views: one that shows all tasks, one that shows completed tasks, another that shows tasks with a deadline within the next week, and finally, one that shows overdue tasks.

Adding limitations to linked records—which filters specific records—reduces clutter, hides them from specific collaborators and/or public views, and restricts form options. A few important notes:

• The "Limit record selection to a view" toggle limits "record selection" in the record selection picker only. It does not specifically limit the number of records that a linked cell can contain.

• The "Limit record selection to a view" toggle does not allow you to limit the linked records shown in your table based on another table's view.

• The "Limit record selection to a view" toggle does not filter out the appearance of linked records based on another 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.

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