How to work with data from Referenced Table?

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1

Here I have a table with a referenced table. As you can see, the ids of the rows are of course unique… 1, 2 and 3.

But the referenced column value is not. “15,23” repeats.

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Questions:
a) how in Grist itself would I know which row is which?
b) how can I send data from n8n, Grist Plugin API or even an Excel table, and be sure the 15,23 will refer to row id 3 and not row id 1?

If I try to send data to tell Grist I want row id 3 specifically, like Table2[3], Grist interprets that as a text instead of a column reference (even though the inverse shows exactly that… menaing, having a formula column “=$Ref” (which is exactly the formula of column A)

2

a) I think you have to just use another column for the dropdown/display value, one that is guaranteed to have unique values. If the id column is too awkward, you could make a special column that is a combination of e.g. id + value and use that.
b) I’m not sure how the plugin api works, but for the REST api you would likewise just have to use id or the custom column