CSV (or XLS) import

Airtable offers the ability to import CSV data directly into interfaces, but it comes with some major limitations:

• It requires a Business or Enterprise Plan.
• It only works on list-based interfaces.
• It can’t import data into linked record fields or attachment fields.
• I don’t know if it remembers the mapping between imports, but even if it does, each user will still need to setup their own mapping during their first import.
• The user can accidentally change the mapping during each import.
• You can’t setup different “templates” on the same page for different types of imports.

Your much better option for automatically importing CSV files into Airtable’s interfaces is to use Make’s CSV modules along with Make’s Airtable modules.

This is the only option that:

• Works on ALL Airtable plans (not just Business and Enterprise Plans).
• Works with ALL Airtable field types, including linked record fields and attachment fields.
• The field mapping is locked in and unchangeable by the user.
• The field mapping is set in advance, so the user doesn’t need to set this during their first import.
• Works on ALL interface pages (not just list pages), because your users will just click on a button to open a cloud drive folder to drop in their CSV files.
• You can setup different “templates” for different types of imports by giving different buttons that lead to different cloud folders, each folder triggering a different automation. (This could be done with the same folder too, but it’s way more complicated to setup.)

As mentioned above, your users would simply need to drop their CSV files into a cloud drive folder, which you can give them quick access to via a button that you add to any of your interface pages.

I demonstrate how to import CSV files into Airtable using Make on this Airtable podcast episode. This video will give you a step-by-step walkthrough on how to set this up in Make.

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 could 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

Hey ​@Frederico Cary,

Make (mentioned by Scott above) is great, and it seems that they have launched really interesting features these past few days. Having said that, I usually solve this issue and (and all of my integrations/automations using n8n).

You might want to take a look at a high level comparison on the 3 biggest automation players here. (Might need to update some items given Make’s latest releases). 

If you need any help setting this up, feel free to schedule a brief call using this link and I’d be happy to show you around.
 

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

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel

Hmm, how big’s your CSV file?  If it’s <100k characters (the max characters in a long text field) and <8k rows (max runs of a repeating group), you could try just using an automation + script to handle it and I’ve set it up here for you to check out.  

The idea is to get them to paste the CSV data into a long text field and use a script to split out the CSV data with the headers so that you can use it in an automation with a repeating group and set the mapping yourself in the automation in a ‘Create record’ step:

This is a basic example, but you could create one automation per CSV type and have your users select which CSV type they’re importing so that the correct automation (with the correct mappings) gets triggered

let { csvData } = input.config();

// split into lines
let lines = csvData.trim().split('\n');

// extract headers
let headers = lines[0].split(',');

// map each line into an object using headers
let data = lines.slice(1).map(line => {
  let values = line.split(',');
  let obj = {};
  headers.forEach((h, i) => obj[h.trim()] = values[i]?.trim());
  return obj;
});

output.set('data', data)

If it’s >10k chars and >8k lines, you’d need to use a workaround, and oen of the popular ones is to upload the CSV and then use a script to read the CSV then create the records for you.  Here’s one where someone provided a script that worked for them: 

Pretty straightforward script really, try tinkering with ChatGPT for a bit and you should be good to go

The first time I encountered this issue, I used Make - iterate over each line of the CSV, and search Airtable and Upsert.

Second time, I used N8n - Iteration over Airtable and Upsert was much more cost effective.

Third Time, I used Airtable Automation with a scripting module. If your CSV is under 3-4 mb in size, Regular Airtable script can usually handle it. Note that there are two types of scripts. One that runs in automations and the other that runs inside Extension. The latter runs locally and has a 10+minute runtime. The one inside automations times out after 120 seconds (or is it 30? unsure. Test). You can batch write to Airtable at the rate of about 50 records per second.

4th time I had this issue, my csv was more than 10 mb in size. I use the script, which pushed the csv attachment url to N8n. N8n has a code module that handles files in milliseconds, so it replies back to the script with details of what to write. The Airtable script then writes it to the Airtable base.

5th time I had this issue, I said F*** it, and installed Postgres on my Elest.io server. N8n now writes directly to the postgres, queries it for summaries and writes back only the summaries to Airtable in like 5 seconds. Much faster than any of the methods above. 

There you have it. Choose whichever tickles your bones. Or ping me at opstwo.com and I could build it for you.