Pre-fill form formula link not pre-filling

​@alato014 

To create the proper formula, you will need to make sure that you have an underscore (_) after every time you use the word “prefill”, as described in this Airtable support article.

To make it even easier for you to create your prefill formula, ​@kuovonne created the Prefilled Forms extension for Airtable, which makes it very easy to create your prefill link formula in Airtable.

However, prefilled links are no longer the recommended way of doing this anymore.

The #1 recommended way of doing this is to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

Fillout is 100% free and it gives you the built-in ability to update an existing Airtable record with a form — with NO PREFILL LINKS REQUIRED and NO AUTOMATIONS REQUIRED.

More importantly, the reason you never want to use prefilled links with Airtable’s forms is because they come with serious & major downsides that you will want to be aware of:

1. Critical problem: You will have to continually send out updated prefilled links to your users that always contain the newest data. If the user accidentally clicks on an outdated link, they will be taken to old data in the form. So they would never be able to re-use a link or bookmark a link as an “Update My Account Profile” link.
2. Airtable does not allow prefilled fields to be LOCKED, meaning that a user can always override a prefilled field (even if it’s hidden). If you need a prefilled field to be locked & hidden, then you can always use Fillout to hide and lock defaults.
3. Airtable’s prefilled links do not work with all field types… particularly attachment fields or lengthy long text fields that exceed URL limits.
4. If you need the data to remain private or secure, Airtable’s prefilled links reveal all the data within the link. With Fillout’s links, you get one simple, non-changing link per user that doesn’t reveal any data, and you can even add multiple different layers of security to the form if necessary, including SSO login or email login.
5. Airtable’s prefilled links still won’t update old records… they always create new records, and then you will need to write an automation that handles the overwriting of the old data.
6. You lose all the advanced features of Fillout’s forms.

So, instead of using prefilled links, simply use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable because no prefilled links are required — you can simply update an existing Airtable record using a form.

And in those circumstances when you’re NOT trying to update an existing Airtable record but you still need to prefill a form, Fillout gives you 4 other ways to prefill a form — for a grand total of 5 different ways to prefill a form. And best of all, no prefilled links are required for 4 of these 5 methods.

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.

Fillout also offers hundreds of other advanced features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to 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.

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

Ah, that’s happening because Airtable’s converting your underscores to italics as part of the markdown syntax

To fix it, try using markdown for your link, i.e. using [LINK TEXT](LINK) and I’ve set it up here for you to check out

Here’re some screenshots: