Having Problems Setting Up a One to One Table Link

Hello. I am a new Airtable user and am unable to set up a one-to-one link between two tables. Table A is a unique list of organizations with addresses and contact information. Table B is a list of contacts that work for the organizations. When I set a link field between the two tables using the Organization name field, Table A allows a one-to-many relationship. But when I go to Table B and try to add lookup fields to my contacts, it’s not a one to one relationship, it’s one to many. So when I select a record in Table B (an employee of an organization in Table A), it shows every organization in Table A. Can someone please help me figure out how to fix this so I can have lookup fields work the way they are supposed to? I tried with chatGPT, but no luck. Thanks

When you create a linked record field in Airtable, Airtable will automatically create a “reverse backlink” linked record field in the OTHER table.

If you’re not seeing this field in the other table, then it is probably hidden and you will need to unhide it by using the “hidden fields” button in the toolbar.

If you’d like a deep dive into linked record fields and lookup fields, you may want to check out my free Airtable training course, which you can take for free by signing up for a free 30-day trial with LinkedIn Learning. My course is very old and will be discontinued soon, but the basic Airtable concepts still remain the same.

Good morning, Scott. Thank you for replying to my request so quickly. To add more information about my problem. I see the relation link in both Table A and Table B. But what I was hoping to happen, as in other relational databases, is to have the linked field and any lookup fields that I add to Table A be populated with the linked data automatically. That would be a huge time saver.

Instead, I manually click on the plus icon in the linked field in Table A, and select the matching organization field in Table B. However, since it is a one-to-many relationship, I must select the correct organization from the 1,800 organizations in Table B. In addition, Table A has 7,000 records of contacts who work for the organizations in Table B.

I hope that makes sense. I would appreciate hearing if you have a solution that saves me this mandate task. I am also terrified that if the link field is broken or deleted by accident, I will need to go through this process again.

Unlike other database systems, there is no automatic linking in Airtable. Airtable requires you to manually create your own relationships by manually choosing your own linked records in linked record fields.

For a shortcut way of doing this: If you already have the organization names listed in a text field in your Contacts table, and the organization names exactly match the primary field values in your Organizations table, you can convert the text field to a linked record field. (You can also copy-and-paste the values from the text field into the linked record field.)

Thank you, Scott, for that suggestion. The organization names do match exactly, so I will give that a try. I really appreciate it.

You’re welcome! Glad I could help! The issue that you brought up was one of the strangest things that I had to get used to in Airtable, because I became an Airtable consultant after 30+ years of being a relational database developer. The lack of automatic relationship linking was just the strangest concept to me, but I got used to it over time. Lol.

Definitely, Scott. I am used to SQL and other relational database schemas, but Airtable intrigues me. It’s cool, fun to learn, and can do some great stuff. Thank you for your attention to my question. It’s very refreshing to know you are so engaged with the community. I look forward to bugging you in the future with other Airtable questions. Enjoy the rest of your Monday! :smiley:

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