How to Do Case-Sensitive Filtering in Airtable

You have a Single line text field in your table. You want to filter records based on an exact value with the exact casing.

For example, you want to filter for the term Backrow. The filter should return only Backrow and exclude records with BackRow or BACKROW.

The filter must distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters when filtering.

So you went ahead and tried setting the condition {Field Name} is Backrow. The problem is Airtable still shows results with different casing. That is not what you want.

The is operator is case insensitive and cannot give you a truly case-sensitive match. If you want a case-sensitive match you will need to use contains in place of is.

But you want an exact match so you cannot use contains.

So how can you get an exact match that is truly case-sensitive?

There is a formula-based workaround. It is not elegant, but it serves the purpose.

Here is how to do it step by step.

1. Add a SearchTerm field

First, create a formula field called SearchTerm.

Set the formula to the exact string you want to match. For example "Backrow".

This locks in the term with the exact casing you want.

2. Add a Search field

Next, create another formula field called Search with this formula

IF(FIND({SearchTerm}, {SearchField}), TRUE(), FALSE())

Replace SearchField with the name of the field you are filtering against. Format this formula field as a checkbox.

3. Filter using the Search field

Now you can filter your view by checking whether the Search field is true.

This forces Airtable to only return results where the case matches exactly.

It’s not the cleanest solution, but it gets the job done if you need quick case-sensitive searches.

All you have to do is change the value of SearchTerm whenever you want to run a new case-sensitive filter.