Validating unique values in a form

I have a problem that’s driving me nuts. I want to validate an input on a form to ensure it’s a unique value relative to the table it is being added to.

I have this validation formula:
thisTable.[YATS Lookup Column].contains(CurrentValue)=false

I had to create a duplicate column because it says it’s a circular formula if I try and validate it against the same column. But in any event this doesn’t work. Also tried doing a “find” on the column and validating that it’s <0 but that also doesn’t work.

So what am I missing? How do I set the validation so that if someone tries to submit an existing value it won’t let them (or, that it will only allow to submit a unique value that’s not already in the table?)

Stumped!

Oh wow -

I actually figured out how to do this a year ago - it’s live in a form I have.

Wacko busy day. Can you remind me tomorrow if someone hasn’t already helped you???

Well that provides me with hope if not a solution :slight_smile:

Hey @Scott_Collier-Weir ! Thanks for offering to help @Jarred_Cinman . Just popping in a reminder here for you.

Ahhh thank you! I ended up helping him out in a private DM

@Jarred_Cinman can you share what we chatted about?

I can also get some looms in here for everyone else over the next week

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You’re awesome @Scott_Collier-Weir ! Thanks for your help as always :smile:

Hi Scott, I have the same problem, validating a field entry to be unique. Any chance you could illuminate me too?
Kevin

OG posters use case was actually a little different. can you explain your use case a bit more? More specific the better! There are so many ways to handle these kinds of workflow

Scott is in fact awesome, I can confirm that.

I have to say ultimately this didn’t turn out to be something that could be done in Coda. Because the form sits on the “outside” of the doc as it were the only way to really do this was have people login to the Coda doc itself to enter the information. Because I can’t give access to everyone to this doc I had to solve this an entirely different way outside of Coda. I do think as a note to Codans forms need quite a lot of improvement to be truly useful. They are definitely the weakest part of the current codaverse and quite limited in how they can be used as a front-end to working with Coda doc data.

thanks for checking up

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