Kuovonne's Guide to Airtable

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Kuovonne's Guide to Airtable

Writing Formulas

Formulas to avoid
Formulas to avoid

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Avoid the following situations. They can slow down a base:

NOW(), TODAY(), TONOW(), and FROMNOW(). These formulas recalculate for every record in the table even when there are no data changes. This can slow down your base. Plus, NOW() is notoriously inaccurate. It can be off by anywhere from a few minutes (when you are looking at a view) to a few hours (when the base is closed).

Long chain formulas — formula fields that are used in formula fields that are used in formula fields, etc. It can take a long time for these long chains to fully resolve.

Rollups based on linked record fields with many linked records. The more linked records you have, the more calculations are required for the rollup. If you have hundreds or thousands of records all linked to the same record, it can take a long time for rollups to recalculate.

Multiple back-and-forth rollups. A single rollup of a rollup is often the best way to perform certain calculations. However, the more times you go back-and-forth, the longer it takes for Airtable to update all calculations.

Also avoid the following situations. You can get unexpected results:

Comparisons with BLANK() or FALSE(). You can directly test the field value to see if it is blank or false.

Date comparisons using logical operators instead of date comparison functions.

VALUE() with text strings that contain letters or symbols other than digits. You can get unpredictable results.

Lookup fields, unless you are very confident in what you are doing. In general, you are better of converting the lookup to a rollup.

Rollup fields that rollup text without ARRAYJOIN(). You might end up with an array, which can have unexpected results.

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Formulas to avoidFormulas to avoid

Formulas to avoid
Formulas to avoid