Record picker in Lookup of linked records select by non-primary field

Airtable Questions
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Don’t you find useful to be able to select records in the record picker in Lookup window to link a record between a field (table 1) to another non-primary field (table 2)?

I find myself often searching the linked records by different other fields than the primary field. Right now I have created concatenated primary field.

But it would be just easier if we were able to determine which field is being used for lookup of the linked record.

One of the benefits of this would be for automations. Let’s say Table 2 is linked to Table 1. When I am in Table 2 and need to link a record and I do not know the value of the primary field, I can’t look it up. So I can’t have automation to establish a link either. But I know another field from Table 1 which is non-primary field.

If I could lookup using the non-primary field from Table 2 in Table 1 and establish the link, I could setup automation to do that.

In fact that’s what I am doing routinely because I import CSV data using CSV import extension and it includes incomplete data, but one field is always correct, the non-primary field.

I know I can solve this using search step in automation etc, but it is a bit gimmicky and not solve it completely because I still want to be able to do manual linking when needed, so I still will have the same issue when doing it manually.

If I was able to do direct lookup in linked field using non-primary field, that all would be resolved.

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Yes, I listed this as my #5 top feature request in my feature requests thread below. Please feel free to add your comments into the thread:

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I have ended up now setting up a “helper” or translator table for each situation like that. That 3rd helper table is linked to both Table 1 and Table 2 and that way I am automating the linking from Table 2 to Table 1 via the non-primary fields. It works okay, it’s less gimmicky than using search step in automation or Integromat but I can imagine this could get messy with multiple linked fields like this.

Not to mention I have to keep detailed notes of how I have done this because the time passes and if I have to modify it I will be looking at it like a kid eyes open as if looking at something for the first time :wink: