Bases Formula: Cross-Note Lookup & Rollup

Summary

Bases formulas today only operate on the current note’s frontmatter and file metadata—there’s no way to query or summarize fields from other notes within a formula .

Inspiration from Notion

Notion’s Relation property lets you link entries across databases. Its Rollup then aggregates a linked property—summing task hours, counting subtasks, pulling statuses, and so on—automatically across those related entries .

Use cases

Connect different sets of notes together!
For now it can be done using Dataview.

I know Bases formulas dev is still ongoing but I didn’t see this feature considered, so I thought I’d ask~

13 Likes

It would be great if these 2 features were released in the next updates

1 Like

I’d love to be able to filter a Base like this.

Eg,
I show all filtered notes that include certain properties only if another note that links to them hasn’t been modified in 30 days.

This will be possible in Obsidian v1.9.7 using file() and Link.asFile() and File.properties.

Be aware that these functions have a performance impact on the table and the table itself is not automatically refreshed in case of changes to the source notes. You will have to manually reload the table.

1 Like

Right now, if you apply File.properties to a list of links, you get a list of property values. For example, if the property is “price,” you get a list of prices. However, it seems to me that there is currently no way to get the sum or average of values, other than by manually summing each member of the list with a selector like [0], [1]. I assume this functionality will be added in future updates, but I wanted to check if I am missing something and this is already possible.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.