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Automation runs stuck at "pending" at different steps: not a rate limit issue

  • October 17, 2025
  • 7 replies
  • 149 views

Marta_Krzeminsk
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Edit after ~1h of investigation: it turns out these are rate limits that are the culprit. Which raises a new question: if I change the email address in the automation, will it impact the runs that are currently in progress? My guess is no. And so, if no, is there any way to trigger a re-run of the currently stuck runs?


 

 

I several automations running that involve sending emails. They have both run over 6k times until yesterday around 8pm many runs are stuck in “pending”. 

There are several things puzzling about it:

  1. There isn’t a clear cut off when the automations started getting stuck. See screenshot below: several still pending from before 9pm on Oct 16, followed by successful runs, then everything after 10.15pm is pending.

2.Runs stuck at different steps. The automation has two steps: find records, then send email. The earlier runs are stuck at the step of sending an email. This makes it hard to verify which part of the automation is malfunctioning.

Earlier runs pending at the step “send email”.

 

Later run is pending at the step “find records”.

My current hypothesis is that AT processes this linearly, that is: it aims to first to  “finish” one run by completing sending an email, and only then progresses to the next run to perform the first step of the automation (i.e. looking for the right record). 

This still doesn’t tell me why these automations are stuck.

3.A test ran 20hrs ago says our account temporarily hit rate limits. This seems implausible: this is workspace account so afaiu the limit is 2k emails a day. I checked in the Workspace admin, we have not hit that limit (~1600). So I doubt this is blocking the automations from progressing.

These emails are quite important (duh), not sending them creates many lot of inbound queries and other issues which is not ideal on a Friday 😅

What do you think the issue can be? How can I troubleshoot it or resolve it? 

 

 

 

7 replies

GCheung
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  • Community Manager
  • October 27, 2025

Hey ​@Marta_Krzeminsk! ​Because your question hasn't yet received an answer/solution from the Community, we've created a Support Case on your behalf with our Airtable Expert Team to get you the quickest response possible. Please check your email for follow-up and your case reference number—and continue to follow this thread as new community members tend to share answers and add knowledgeable responses regularly. Thanks!


Mike_AutomaticN
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Hey ​@Marta_Krzeminsk!

1. I’m “glad” you figured out what was going on.
2. Re. is there any way to trigger a re-run of the currently stuck runs?: Nope unfortunately there is currently no way to do this natively in Airtable (Make, n8n and other automation tools do have this option though). I would highly suggest you submit this as a product idea using this form.

Completely different matter, but would love to have you join our Airtable Hackathon! Make sure to sign up!!

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel


James_McElroy
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  • Known Participant
  • January 22, 2026

Running into the same issue. Based on above I realize there’s no way to re-run stuck runs. Is there a way to cancel runs in progress so I can try running my automation again in smaller batches?


ScottWorld
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  • Genius
  • January 22, 2026

Hmm… I’m not sure if this would work, but you might be able to get Airtable to stop the stuck automation runs if you completely turn off the automation by using the On/Off switch. I’ve never tried this and I’m not 100% sure if it works, but it’s worth a shot.

Besides that possibility, unfortunately, Airtable doesn’t provide an official way to “cancel” stuck runs or “re-run” all failed runs at once.

Because of these reasons — and dozens upon dozens of other reasons — I always recommend to all Airtable customers that they should try to outsource as many of their automations as possible to Make’s advanced automations for Airtable.

Not only does Make elegantly solve both of the problems discussed in this thread, but it offers unlimited power & customizability & integrations with other apps that you cannot get from Airtable’s automations. 

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is one of the ways that you can instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable

I also give live demonstrations of how to use Make in many of my Airtable podcast appearances. For example, in this video, I show how to work with Airtable arrays in Make.

Hope this helps!

If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld


James_McElroy
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  • Known Participant
  • January 22, 2026

Thanks ​@ScottWorld that worked! 


ScottWorld
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  • Genius
  • January 22, 2026

Hi ​@James_McElroy,

Wow, that’s great to hear! 😀🙌

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant 


Mike_AutomaticN
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Lol, glad to hear that ​@James_McElroy ​@ScottWorld.

Different experince, but might help future readers:

Some time ago I had HUNDREDS of automations with pending executions/runs. Whenever I tried turning the automation OFF, the “Refresh Page” error pop-up showed up. Even if I tried deleting the automation, same thing happened.

Long story short, I reached out to AT (support@airtable.com) and they got that handled on their end (I think asked for them to cancel all pending executions).

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel