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Create a Lookup View

Goal​

Choose which columns someone sees when they pick a record of a table through a lookup field — so two records with the same name can be told apart.

Prerequisites​

  • You are signed in with a maker (or platform administrator) role.
  • The table whose records will be picked exists, with the fields you want to show.

Steps​

  1. Open the table whose records get picked (the table a lookup field points at) in Tables, and go to the Views tab.
  2. Select New to open the View Designer.
  3. Enter a display name — for example, Contact Lookup — and a logical name after the publisher prefix, for example contact_pick.
  4. Set View type to Lookup.
  5. Drag two to four fields from the palette onto the grid header. A lookup panel is a picker, not a report: the name plus one or two fields that tell similar records apart is usually the right amount.
  6. Tick Default view so every lookup pointing at this table uses it.
  7. Select Save.

Every lookup field pointing at this table now shows these columns. To give one particular field on one particular form a different set, open that form in the Form Designer, select the lookup field, and choose a Lookup view in the property panel; leaving it on Default uses the view you just marked as default.

What happens behind the scenes​

A lookup view is an ordinary view with its type set to Lookup, so it is versioned, validated, and travels in your solution like any other view. Marking it as the default does not disturb the table's default list view — a table has one default of each view type, because they are read by different screens.

A lookup view also decides which shape the picker takes:

  • With one, you have said which columns are how someone picks a record of this table, so the panel offers Advanced lookup as well: the whole table as a grid, with paging.
  • Without one, the panel is the list itself — each record's picture, its name, and its second line underneath — and there is no "show me the grid" link, because there is no set of columns anyone chose for it.

So a lookup works before you author any view: it falls back to the table's default list view, trimmed to its first three columns, and to the table's primary field if there is no list view either. This scenario improves a lookup rather than enabling it.

Troubleshooting​

  • The lookup still shows a single column of names. Check that the view's type is Lookup and that it is marked as the default, and that you edited the view on the table being picked from, not the table holding the lookup field.
  • A column you added is missing from the panel. A column naming a field that has since been deleted is skipped rather than shown blank. Re-open the view and confirm the field still exists.
  • The panel says more records match. The panel shows one page at a time; type more text to narrow it, or set a quick find view so typing searches more than the name.