I’m working on setting up an Airtable interface and running into a frustrating issue. I built a new interface page with a Group section that holds various reports. When I try to add dropdown filters to the top of my group, I notice that some field types aren’t available as filter options.
Specifically, I can’t select any of my formula fields to use as filters. This is really annoying because I have this formula field that shortens my primary field text to make it more readable. I’d love to use this shortened version as the main filter that users can pick from.
Has anyone found a solution for this? Is there some setting I’m missing or maybe a different approach that would let me filter by formula fields in interface groups?
Yeah this is a known limitation that’s been bugging people for a while. Airtable doesn’t allow formula fields as dropdown filters in interface groups.
Here’s what I’ve done to work around it:
Create a new single select field instead of using the formula. Copy the values from your formula field and paste them as options in the single select. Then use an automation to keep it synced - whenever a record is created or updated, have the automation set the single select field to match your formula output.
It’s extra work but it gives you the filterable dropdown you want. The automation keeps everything in sync so users don’t have to manually update both fields.
Another option is using the regular table view with your formula field as a filter, then embedding that view in your interface. Not as clean but sometimes works better depending on your setup.
I’ve pushed our Airtable rep about this multiple times but no timeline on when they’ll fix it. The single select workaround has been solid for our team though.