Why Linked Records Disappear in Public Record Review Interfaces (and What You Can Do)

Let’s say your company helps students apply to college. You’ve built an Airtable base with two tables to organize everything.

The first is a “US Colleges” table. It lists each college and includes notes on what they look for in applicants.

The second is a “Supplemental Essays” table. This one stores each college’s essay prompts and links them back to the relevant college.

To help your tutors guide students more efficiently, you’ve created an Airtable Interface using the Record Review layout. You chose the “US Colleges” table as the source.

Each record in this table represents one college — like Stanford, MIT, or the University of Michigan.

Tutors need to see what each college values in applicants. That might include academic rigor, leadership experience, or community involvement.

They also need to see the supplemental essays required by that college. These are extra, school-specific essays students must submit along with their Common App personal statement.

For example, Stanford might ask “What matters to you and why,” while Michigan might ask “Why do you want to attend the University of Michigan.”

You’ve stored all these prompts in the “Supplemental Essays” table, with each one linked to its college.

So if a school requires three different essays, all three are linked to that college’s record in the “US Colleges” table.

In your interface, you’ve included the linked record field, so tutors can view all the essay prompts directly below each college’s profile.

When a tutor clicks on a record like Duke University, they can easily see what the school values and what essays the student will need to write.

This setup works exactly as intended while you're building or editing the interface. But once you open the public view, things change.

The linked essay prompts no longer appear. Even though the field is visible in the editor, the public version hides the linked records completely.

Linked Records Disappear in Public View

Airtable’s Record Review interfaces don’t show linked records in public links.

They remain visible when you’re logged in, but disappear for anyone viewing the public link.

The Workaround: Show Linked Data Using a Rollup or Lookup

If you need those linked records to appear in a public Record Review interface, you’ll have to bring the data into the main table using a rollup or lookup.

For example, if you’re linking to essay prompts, you can create a rollup field in the “US Colleges” table. Point it to the linked “Supplemental Essays” field, and select the field you want to display — like the essay text.

To format multiple values neatly, use a formula like ARRAYJOIN(values, "\n\n").

This rolls all related essay prompts into one text field that lives inside the main table. Since it’s no longer a cross-table link, Airtable will show it in the public interface.

It’s not as flexible as viewing full records, but for read-only sharing, it gives tutors the context they need.