You cannot create a field that references the Record ID field and that requires unique values.

Question

I have a formula field that concatenates a few different fields into 1 value, one of which is the record ID. That's working fine. But when I try to set the "must be unique" checkbox on the formula text field I get the following error:
You cannot create a field that references the Record ID field and that requires unique values. Please change your formula to not reference the Record ID field or uncheck the unique checkbox.
My question is... why? A record ID by definition is unique, so why can't I require a formula field that includes the Record ID to be unique? The logic seems faulty to me, but I assume there's a good reason for it. And is there a way around this, perhaps with custom data rules?

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Harrison Smith
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MarkShnierYou · Answer

The likely reason why you cannot use the Record ID to be unique is that suppose you were creating a record. QuickBase first has to save the record to determine the Record ID. But then if it is supposed to enforce uniqueness then it would have to block the save because the value is not unique so at that point it's actually too late to block the save because it already created the Record ID.

Having said that, if in fact you have a concatenated field which includes the Record ID then by definition it is unique because as you said the Record ID is unique. So you have no need to mark that field as needing to be unique because it will be unique.

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Mark Shnier (YQC)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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