"This is not a valid row reference"

[Sabrina_Wee]

Hi, I’m not sure why I’m having an issue with this. I use a similar same set up/formula on another column and it doesn’t show me the “this is not a valid row reference error”.

So, it somehow works here

but not here (unless I change the column type to a “text” versus the current “look up” type)

I understand that there is a difference in the data type, but I don’t understand why there is a difference because they are both from another table where the column is a look-up data type.

Also, a side question, what is the difference between symbol A and B?

Thanks for all the help!

[Jean_Pierre_Traets]

Dear @Sabrina_Wee ,

This post will explain you in detail the symbols of the formula chips

Introducing formula chips

Hello Everyone, Today we are launching another exciting improvement to make reading and writing formulas in Coda a little bit easier. We have heard a lot of great feedback from our community that it can be hard to tell why a formula is not working as expected. Two of the most common issues we see are the result of comparing or using values of the wrong data type and picking objects from the wrong table. We hope to improve these situations and many more with the introduction of formula chips. …

[Sabrina_Wee]

Dear @Jean_Pierre_Traets , thanks for the reference - this will be helpful!
I’m still unable to understand why the formula went wrong though.
The formula chip shows that my Project Type reference is of another format. But it follows the same
“structure” as the company type.
Essentially, when you compare side by side, both “Company Type” and “Project Type” are looking up information from a column in another table that is essentially, just a text column

Company Type and Project/Event Type Tables

The both situations follow the “same step” , but somehow it doesn’t work for the Project situation.

It would really be great if you could help or let me know if more information is needed.

Thank you so much in advance!

[Pch]

Hi @Sabrina_Wee !

The “problem” might not come from your [Project Type] lookup field but from your Projects field.

Your Projects field is the one outputting a list of rows from your Projects table (I guess ) in the first place (as this what the visual cue for thisRow.Projects is indicating).

So, in your formula thisRow.Projects.[Projects Type], [Project Type] outputs a list of lists of rows from your table [Project Type].

Here’s a screenshot of what I get when gathering Projects within a multi-select lookup field by manually selecting only 1 project per row and then try to get the related type of the selected project in another multi-select lookup field

And this is what I get when I convert the multi-select Projects lookup field to a single-select one (without modifying the multi-select lookup for the types)

So, I guess the question here would be: how do you get your projects within your table ?

[Sabrina_Wee]

Hi @Pch Thank you for this! Changing the project options setting to disallow multiple settings worked!
I’m still not quite sure of the logic but I’m super glad it worked nonetheless

[Pch]

No problem @Sabrina_Wee !

Glad to know it helped !