Lookup Column Autocomplete

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Hello, new to Glide. I apologize if this has already been answered…
I am using a Google Sheet for data. We have two tables in the sheet Businesses and CEOs.

On the Businesses sheet, we list the CEO’s name. The CEOs sheet list each CEO and their contact info. On the Businesses sheet, there are multiple Businesses. Each Business has the CEO listed.

In Glide, I want to make a column in the Business sheet that is a “dropdown/autocomplete” for the CEO. Currently I have two columns in the Businesses sheet, one that is just a CEO’s name typed out and one that is a Relation column. The Relation column looks at the CEO column and tries to find the CEO from the CEOs sheet. I want to make it so that there is only one column. In that column cell, I would be able to choose the CEO from the CEOs table(almost like a dropdown).

Issue: Currently the CEO name in both sheets has to match perfectly for the Relation column to pull it accurately. If it was a dropdown, this would limit errors. Airtable has this functionality, called “Link to another record”. It works like an autocomplete/dropdown. I know that I can link to Airtable, but I would prefer to use either Google Sheet or Glide tables.

Screenshot 2023-09-18 at 10.26.17 AM
Screenshot 2023-09-18 at 10.26.17 AM2770×790 203 KB

2

You can use a choice component to pick the CEOs from the CEOs table.

However, I don’t think that’s the cleanest way to do it. You should:

  • Add a rowID in the CEOs table.
  • In the choice component, set the underlying value to be written as the rowID from the CEOs table, still show the CEO’s name on the front end.
  • Use a relation based on the chosen ID and multiple lookup columns to pull back the info needed in the Businesses table.

This is to make sure the CEO value you have in the Businesses table is unique. Say you have 2 Tim Cooks from 2 different companies in the CEOs table, the second relation would pull the first Tim Cook and then it’s wrong. Names are not unique.

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