Turn a registration field into a live search box using your own spreadsheet

If your registration form asks for something like a hotel, a company, or a partner name, typing it as free text is asking for trouble — typos, inconsistent spelling, and nothing to auto-fill from. Lookup turns that field into a live search box instead.

You upload a spreadsheet of the valid options once. From then on, as an attendee types, matching results appear for them to pick from — and choosing one can automatically fill in other fields, like an address or a postal code.

Before you start, you need:

• An idloom account on the Premium or Corporate plan
• A prepared .xlsx or .csv file, under 10 MB, with column headers in the first row
• An event that uses the profile where you'll make the integration available

A concrete example: a list of partner hotels

Say you're organising a conference and want attendees to select their hotel from a list you've negotiated rates with, instead of typing a name freehand. Your spreadsheet looks like this:

Here's how each column gets used once it's uploaded:

• Value Column → Hotel ID. This is what's actually saved as the attendee's answer — not the hotel name, the ID.
• Label Columns → Hotel Name and City. Combined, these build what the attendee sees in the dropdown: Hotel Julien - Antwerp.
• Searched Columns → Hotel Name and City. Whatever the attendee types is checked against both, so searching "antwerp" surfaces the right row just as well as searching "julien".
• Auto-fill mappings → Postal Code maps to the form's postal_code field, and Street maps to street_address. When the attendee picks Hotel Julien, those two fields fill in with 2000 and Korte Nieuwstraat 24 automatically.

An attendee typing "antwerp" sees Hotel Julien - Antwerp as a suggestion. They select it, H-03 is stored as their answer, and the postal code and street fields on the form fill in without them typing anything else.

Upload your spreadsheet and create the integration

1. Go to Integrations → Lookup form in your idloom back office and create a new integration.
2. Give it a Name — this is just for your own reference, for example Hotel list 2026.
3. Under Available for profiles, select which profiles can use it.
4. Upload your .xlsx or .csv file. The first row must be column headers — those become the columns you'll choose from next.
    

Once it's uploaded, idloom shows Rows imported and Columns detected, so you can confirm the file read correctly before configuring anything.

Tell Lookup which columns to use

Three short sections decide how your spreadsheet becomes a working search field.

What gets stored. Set the Value Column — the one column whose value is actually saved as the attendee's answer once they pick a result. In the hotel example above, that's Hotel ID, not the hotel name itself.

What attendees see. Set one or more Label Columns — these build the line shown in the dropdown. In the example, Hotel Name and City combine into Hotel Julien - Antwerp.

What's searched. Set the Searched Columns — every column checked against what the attendee types. Add every column someone might reasonably search by: a hotel name, a city, a postal code. The match doesn't need to be exact or match capitalisation.

Auto-fill other fields on selection

Once an attendee picks a result, Lookup can fill in other fields on the form automatically, so they don't have to type an address twice.

1. Under Auto-fill other fields, select Add Field Mapping.
2. Choose a Column from your file, and enter the matching Target Field name from your registration form.
3. Repeat for each field you want filled automatically, then save the integration.

Using the hotel example above, that means one mapping pairing Postal Code → postal_code, and a second pairing Street → street_address.
 

If a target field name doesn't exist on the form, that mapping just has no effect — nothing else breaks.

Add the Lookup field to your registration form

1. Open the event and go to Registration → Form.
2. Select + Add field, then Lookup.
3. Give it a Label — what the attendee sees, like "Find your hotel" — and optionally a placeholder or explanatory text.
4. Under Select Integration, choose the integration you just set up.
5. Save the field, then save the form.
    

If Select Integration doesn't appear and a warning shows instead, no Lookup integration is active for that event yet — activate it for the profile, or switch it on for that event alone under Geeks → Integrations.

Ask Barnum AI, right there on the integration screen, for help getting it configured.