Your document needs to be stored in a publicly-accessible document in a publicly-accessible folder, and then you need to use Google Drive's “Get A Share Link” module in Make to get the “web download link”.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
Also is the shared file link you are using in format like this?
https://drive.google.com/uc?id={fileID}&export=download
Your document needs to be stored in a publicly-accessible document in a publicly-accessible folder, and then you need to use Google Drive's “Get A Share Link” module in Make to get the web download link.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
Which is interesting because while Make says “share link”, it really needs the download link as mentioned by @Greg_F. I suspect Make will take the share link but likely converts it behind the curtain to a download link.
Make is not providing the share link, Google is. But Make is just providing an easy front-end to Google’s API that provides the share link.
Here’s an example of what it might look like to use some of Make's Google Drive modules:

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
I suspect Make will take the share link but likely converts it behind the curtain to a download link.
Make is not providing the share link, Google is. But Make is just providing an easy front-end to Google’s API that provides the share link.
Here’s an example of what it might look like to use some of Make's Google Drive modules:

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
I totally get that. What I’m saying is that a Share Link is not what Make actually uses under the covers. It must be transforming the share link into a download link, otherwise, it would not be suitable for Airtable’s upsert into an attachment field.
I understand what you’re saying — that there is a difference between a “share link” and a “download link”
And you are absolutely 100% correct.
What I meant to say in my instructions above is that even though you use Make’s “Get a Share Link” module, that module then returns several different values in a JSON response from Google. One of these values is Google’s “Web Content Link” (which is the web content download link).
This “Web Content Link” (aka “web content download link”) is the value that you must choose to insert into Airtable’s attachment field.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
Alternatively, you can use typeflow.us for generating pdf based on Airtable data. We offer a lifetime plan currently at 150$. This plan lets you generate as many pdf as needed.
There are also several other ways to generate PDF files from Airtable as well. Here are some additional options:
- DocuMint — the original document creation app for Airtable. Creates PDF files.
- DocsAutomator — creates Google Docs documents or PDF files.
- Make’s integrations — which can be integrated with any document-creation app of your choosing, even something as simple as custom Microsoft Word documents.
If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is one way that you can instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.
- Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable — This won’t work if you need to create a document with a varying amount of line items on it, but Fillout lets you automatically generate custom PDF files from a form submission.
I show off this feature on this Airtable podcast episode: Using Fillout to create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
Hope this helps!
If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
Yes, this is possible with The PDF Maker (https://app.thepdfmaker.com), listed on the Airtable Marketplace.
Instead of handling links and static files, you can generate PDFs using Airtable data and have them automatically uploaded as real file attachments in a record — no broken links or permission issues.
The generated PDF is attached directly to the Airtable record via automation — no need to rely on URL workarounds.
Here’s how to get started: Create a template using our Airtable extension
Hi, if it is useful for someone i found here the explanation: https://support.airtable.com/docs/airtable-attachment-url-behavior
Basically you need to get a expiring attachment url, which is created automatically, but cannot be seen. you can only retrieve it with an automation.
Then that is the link that you need to put in MAKE or INTEGROMAT
e following walkthrough is an example of an automation that will update a text field with an expiring download URL based on the attachment(s) stored in an attachment field. You’ll likely need to modify this to fit your own use case and is only meant for demonstration purposes.
-
In the table containing the attachment field that you want to leverage, add two fields:
-
A checkbox field type named “Download URL trigger”
-
A single line text or long text field type named “Expiring attachment download URL(s)”
-
Check the checkbox field in a record containing at least one attachment to use as the test record in the automation you will build.
-
Click on Automations and then the Create automation + button to configure a new automation.
-
Click + Add trigger and choose the When record matches conditions trigger type.
-
Under the “Configuration” section:
-
Select the “Table” containing the attachment field you are leveraging.
-
Next, click + Add condition button
-
You’ll use the checkbox field you created here to set the following condition: When {Download trigger URL} is 
-
Under “Test step” click Use suggested record or Choose record to have the system test the trigger step.
-
Now you can configure an action to update the record with the expiring download URL(s) for the attachments contained in a record. First, click the + Add advanced logic or action button. Then, scroll down the menu of options and choose the Update record action from the list. Under the “Configuration” section:
-
Select the same “Table” you configured in the test step. (The table containing the attachment field)
-
Under “Record ID” click the + button.
-
Under “Insert value from field” click the Airtable record ID token from the list.
-
Under “Fields” click the + Choose field button. Select the “Expiring attachment download URL(s)” field that you created in step 1.
-
Next, click the + button to add the attachment field as a token. In the example base this field is titled “Attachments.” You may need to scroll through the list of field choices below the “Insert value from field” section in order to find your base’s attachment field.
-
Click the ⌄ icon and then click Edit token.
-
Under the “Make a new list of…” section scroll down and click on the Expiring download URL option. This will add the specific properties of each attachment’s expiring download URL to the text field.
-
Test the action and turn on the automation.
-
Now, when you click the checkbox field that triggers this automation, it will add the expiring download link(s) for the attachment(s) and you can share this link with others. Keep in mind that you will need to uncheck and recheck the checkbox field to trigger the automation to run again in the future (i.e. when the expiring download URL has expired).
UPDATE: i think i am closer but it still does not work