Yes, that’s what automations are designed to do. Just click on the blue plus sign and choose the field from the trigger step.
if you need more power & customizability from your email automations, that’s where you would turn to an external automation tool like Make's advanced automations & integrations.
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
Yes, you can do this by using the Find block in the automation module, so that it triggers the automation only a single record:

No, that is unnecessary in what he is trying to do.
I'm not having success using a field value in the subject line. I have a free text field for the user to enter their subject. I can populate the subject field in the automation with that field, but when I generate a preview, I consistently get a message "The "Subject" input is empty."
I would like the user to be able to generate their own subject, not go in and populate it as a static text item in an automation.


You're only getting an error in the preview of the automation. That means that you haven't chosen a test record that has a subject typed in. You'll need to go back to your trigger and choose a test record that has a subject typed in. Then, you can test your action step.
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
You're only getting an error in the preview of the automation. That means that you haven't chosen a test record that has a subject typed in. You'll need to go back to your trigger and choose a test record that has a subject typed in. Then, you can test your action step.
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
thanks, that did the trick!
I wanted to follow up- there is something funky here. I'll run a preview, it will look good, then click the button to trigger the automation and it will give the "no subject" error, even though the test record and the field have a subject in the subject line. If I run a test from the automation screen, I get it fine, but if we click the button, it fails iwth the no subject error. It's like it's getting wiped out somehow.

Screenshot above is me successfully receiving the email when clicking "Test automation."

Screenshot above shows subject.
Then when we try to run it from the interface, we get the "no subject" error again.

Your screenshot above shows Subject #3, but your screenshot from yesterday showed Subject #1. Are you sure that your automation is pointing to the proper field?
- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant
Yup, diff automations. Here's what I just did:
Successful preview

Successful test from automation screen

Failed run from interface

The subject magically disappearing has happened enough times that I'm fairly certain I'm not screwing it up, but could be, for sure!
Show how your automation is setup.