How do I deal with long Lookup dropdown lists in SharePoint?

Question

I have 2 lists in SharePoint, ListA and ListB; ListB has a lookup column pointing to a reference column in ListA. The item reference column in ListA uses the format "Ref DD/MM/YYYY - ID" (where ID is the item ID).

ListA is growing rapidly so the dropdown list for ListB is of course increasing with it, inevitably to an unusable level.

Is there a way to filter the lookup column to only show item records with IDs in a range or above a certain number (e.g. > 500)?

Alternatively (or in addition to filtering), is there a way to have multiple dropdown lists by either ID (e.g. 1-200, 201-400, etc) or DD (e.g. 01, 02, etc)?

Also, is there are way to order the list by ID, as the current order follows DD, MM, YYYY, then ID.

Apologies for all the questions. Any advice on dealing with long dropdown menus from lookup columns would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use JSLink to create a UI control for the Lookup column which will pull top 500 or even better is to allow user to search the lookup column to select the most appropriate value.

See this blog on one such technique.

See this on How to Retrieve a Lookup Field Value in JS LINK