Learning Airtable

Chapter 9. The Rollup Field

Like the Lookup and Count fields, the Rollup field is another tool used in combination with a Linked records field. It’s the most complex of the three and the most powerful.

Fundamentally, the Rollup field does two things. First, it looks up data values from a linked record field in the same table. Second, it can then answer a question about these values using a Rollup function.

What Does It Mean to “Roll Up” a Field?

Once we have a Linked record field in a table, we can create a Rollup field. This Rollup field references a field from the record(s) we’re linking to, as shown in Figure 9-1. (This is the same principle as looking up data from another table with the Lookup field.)

Figure 9-1. Example of rolling up data from linked records in another field.

Pulling in data about Linked records with a Rollup field allows us to do things like calculate the total of a group of orders in an orders table or find the highest-priced item in a table of items. We can use some of the same functions from Airtable’s formula field in a Rollup field, such as SUM and AVG.

Rolling Up Grocery Store Orders

Let’s return to our grocery store example one last time before looking at an example from our Fall Tour Tracker. The grocery base has more records and will better illustrate how a Rollup field can offer insights, especially when data in your base grows beyond a couple ...