Collection Item Data Not Showing When Using Lookup Fields

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1

Hi everyone,
I’m running into an issue where Lookup fields are not displaying properly in a Collection component, and I’m hoping someone might have insight into this.

Context:
In my app, users can be either parent members or child members. When a parent user logs in, they should be able to see a list of their linked child members.

Here’s how my tables are set up:

User Table:

  • Email
  • Name
  • Points

Parent-Child User Table:

  • Parent Email
  • Child Email
  • Child (Relation to User Table)
  • Child Name (Lookup from User Table)
  • Points Child Has (Lookup from User Table)

What I did:
I created a Collection with Parent-Child User Table as the source.
I configured it like this:

  • Title: Child Name (Lookup)
  • Description: Child Email
  • Meta: Points Child Has (Lookup)

The issue:
When the app is accessed as a parent user, only the Description (Child Email) appears in the Collection.
Both the Title and Meta (Lookup fields) are missing—even though the Lookup values are showing correctly in the Data Editor.

However, if I add a Relation to the parent user in the same Parent-Child table (e.g., to show their name), then suddenly all the Lookup fields display correctly in the Collection.
It seems like Lookup fields might not render unless there’s a Relation directly tied to the signed-in user?

Additional Info:

  • The currently signed-in user is a parent member
  • No Row Owners are applied on the Parent-Child table
  • This is a Pages app, not a Classic App
  • Lookup fields are confirmed to be working in the Data Editor

Has anyone else experienced this issue?
Is there a workaround, or is this expected behavior due to how Lookup fields and visibility rules are handled?

Thanks in advance — really appreciate any insights!

2

I’m gonna throw a quick guess. Either:

  1. You should have a single value instead of a lookup
  2. You can pull data straight from the original table, skipping the relation, and filter the collection rows accordingly.
  3. You can define multi-relation or query as a source of your collection.

Let me know if any of these helps

3

Welcome to Glide community by the way! :tada:

4

Hello Koki, welcome to Glide’s community forum :waving_hand:

Maybe you could run us through the user experience you expect to see in your app: a parent user sign in, sees a screen with xyz, taps on abc, sees klm, etc.

Looking at this only, a couple things came to mind:

  1. If users are parent members or child members, then why do you need a separate table to relate a child to a parent?
  2. If truly you need a separate table, then should you be creating the relation in the Users table?