hey there, so I’ve set up an automation to combine typeform single attachments from several attachment fields to put into 1 field by mapping the url of the additional attachments. The automation tests fine, but in practice, I could only ever get 1 source field to 1 destination field. I could never get multiple source fields to 1 multiple attachment destination field. (I’ve tried different separators to no avail. The mapping seems like it should be easy to set up…) There’s the miniExtensions for doing this, but I was hoping for an alternative that doesn’t require their pricey subscription at $39/month for just this one automation. Thanks in advance!
Combining typeform single attachments from several attachment fields into 1 field
+352025 Update:
This is not possible with Typeform on its own, so you would need to use Make’s TypeForm integrations and Make’s Airtable integrations to do this. If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.
However, your #1 best bet for all of this is to permanently leave TypeForm altogether.
Instead, you will want to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable because it communicates directly with Airtable and it natively handles Airtable attachment fields.
Fillout is 100% free, and it offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to update Airtable records using a form, create custom PDF files from a form submission, accept payments on forms, pre-fetch dynamic data from an Airtable record, customize the style and branding of your form, customize a theme for your form, display Airtable lookup fields on forms, create new linked records on a form, add a login page to your form, perform math or other live calculations on your forms, collect signatures on a form, create multi-page forms with conditional paths, connect a single form to dozens of external apps simultaneously, add CAPTCHAs to your form, and much more.
I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:
- Using Fillout to update an existing Airtable record & create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
- Using Fillout to create an order entry form with line items.
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
Welcome to the community, @Michael_Su!
To combine several individual attachments into one attachment field, you would need to create an array of all of the URL’s of those attachments, and insert the array into the attachment field via Airtable’s API or via automations.
You should be able to do this with automations by putting a comma in between the different URLs.
Alternatively, you can also do this with scripting or by using an external automation tool like my personal favorite Integromat.
In fact, you could use Integromat to sit in the middle between TypeForm and Airtable, so that your form submissions already arrive in Airtable in the format that you desire:
Thanks so much for your reply. Indeed, I finally figured out that yes, putting commas between the URLs works fine, as my initial attempts worked fine. What was failing is if some of the source URLs are empty. So, for instance, if I have Source Attachments in Field 1, 2, and 3, using automation to combine into Destination Combined Attachments work great. However, if any of the Source Attachment Fields 1, 2, or 3 are empty, then the Automation fails. Would you perhaps have any insight into how to resolve this issue? Integromat or MiniExtensions do both work; however, I’m trying to avoid any third party services due at request of my school, which is the end use of this table. Thanks in advance!
+352025 Update:
In Make, you would need to use its array options. in this video, I show how to work with Airtable arrays in Make.
However, as mentioned above, your much better option for this is to just use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable, because all of this is natively built into Fillout.
- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant
I’m just using Automation in Airtable and then mapping the separate Images fields from source to a Combined Images field in target, while adding comma in between them. So this works just fine when all source fields have attachments. However, indeed, with empty fields, the Automation cannot handle the extra commas, so still no go, as I am not able to stipulate how many images should be submitted per record. (I did try to use Integromat, specifically to go from typeform to airtable, advanced version, but I couldn’t get the merge attachments to work, as Integromat kept returning errors on the merging of Attachment fields. I’ll keep trying there.) Thanks again for your help!
I was able to get it working with automate.io, seemed much easier to map fields from typeform to airtable, plus combining the attachments into single target field. Whew! Thanks for idea of using third party, still not sure why Integromat didn’t work tho.
+35Glad you got it working! In Make, you would need to use their array tools. Check out my video that I linked to above.
2025 Update:
As mentioned above, your much better option for this is to just use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable, because all of this is natively built into Fillout.
- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant
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