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10.11 General-Purpose Fields ↑
The word lookup can be used as a field type, but is not intended to be used as a field label.
The intent of a lookup field is to allow one Collection to reference Notes stored in a second Collection.
The second Collection must have had a shortcut assigned to it, which you can do when you tailor Collection settings.
Here is an example of how a lookup field might be specified in the Collection template file.
Author: <lookup: authors>
The shortcut to the Collection to be referenced must be specified following the colon. In the example above, ‘authors’ is the shortcut assigned to the second Collection.
One must be mindful of Disk Access Permissions when using a field with type lookup. This can probably best be handled by putting the second Collection alongside of the first, within the same parent folder. You can then use the Open Parent Realm command to first open the parent, and then from there open the primary Collection (the one that does the referencing).
When viewing a lookup field on the Display tab, you will notice a couple of special features.
The value stored in the lookup field will be formatted as a link, using Notenik’s own Custom URL Scheme. If that value already exists as a Title within the Collection identified by the referenced shortcut, then the link will be formatted to open the referenced Note within the second Collection; if the value does not yet exist within the second Collection, the the link will be formatted to add a Note titled with that value in the second Collection.
If there are additional non-blank fields found on the referenced Note in the second Collection, then the lookup value will appear following a disclosure triangle, and clicking on the triangle will disclose the additional available fields from the second Collection.
See Create a Commonplace Book with Lookup Fields for an example of how lookup fields might be used.
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