Preventing Field Value Splitting When Copying to Linked Record Fields in Airtable

You've set up an automation that copies field values from one table to a linked record field in another table when a checkbox is selected.

Everything works smoothly until you notice something odd. One of your values, "Marketing, Communications & PR", is being split into two separate items. "Marketing" and "Communications & PR".

This isn't what you want. You need "Marketing, Communications & PR" to remain as a single value in the linked record field, not get broken apart into multiple entries.

Understanding why this happens

The second table you're copying to uses a linked record field that references the first table.

When the automation runs, it's trying to match the exact text to create the link. However, because your value contains a comma, the table interprets it as a list of separate values and splits them accordingly.

The comma acts as a delimiter, telling the system "these are two different things" rather than "this is one thing with a comma in it".

This is standard behavior for linked record fields when they receive multiple values. They expect comma-separated lists to indicate separate records to link to.

So when your automation passes "Marketing, Communications & PR" to the linked record field, the system reads it as two distinct values. Marketing, and Communications & PR. It then attempts to create two separate links instead of one.

The solution

The fix is straightforward. When you're pasting or inserting the value through your automation, you need to wrap it inside quotes.

Once you add quotes around the value, the table will treat it as a single entity instead of parsing it based on the comma.

This tells the system to treat everything within the quotes as a literal string, ignoring any special meaning that commas or other characters might normally have. It's similar to how you would handle values with commas in a CSV file.

This small adjustment ensures your field values remain intact when they're copied between tables, even when they contain commas or other characters that might otherwise be interpreted as separators.