Formula "Check-In" button stopped pulling record ID

Hey ​@ChrisManchester,

Would you mind sharing some additional context?
E.g. screenshots of your current setup?

Also, I’d suggest you create a new formula field (not the button field) and use the same formula.
In such way you will at least be able to see what the formula outputs to see where the issue really is.

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

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel

Oh, I see this is actually related to a form. Just in case, I’m sharing pre-filling support documentation here.

Thanks Mike! This is Angie and I’m using the owner’s credentials. I have beach staff using an interface. The first screenshot is of the data view. It was working a few weeks ago. A user would click the Check In button and it would redirect to the form with the Time Card and Date prefilled. Once someone is checked in, the Log Time button becomes available to click and log hours, which is also a workaround from what I wanted but it works. 

Hi Angie!  Extremely long shot, but could you try clicking ‘Clear form’ and then reloading the page?  

If that doesn’t work, if you could direct message me an invite link to your base I could take a look at it for you!  Recreated your setup here and it works fine, and so would have to do further investigation in the base itself I’m afraid

Exact same formula:

'https://airtable.com/appnbS3DE2So8D9WU/pag0pM0toaG1ZY3wo/form' & 
'?prefill_Time%20Card=' & RECORD_ID() & 
'&prefill_Rental%20Date=' & DATETIME_FORMAT(TODAY(), "YYYY-MM-DD")

​@ChrisManchester 

Wow, it looks like this is a current bug in Airtable’s forms.

I can’t get Airtable’s forms to prefill any linked records anymore, although I can still get it to prefill all the other fields.

Please be sure to report this as a bug to support@airtable.com, and hopefully they will fix it ASAP.

In the meantime, this is probably the best time ever to talk about the MUCH MUCH better way of creating forms for Airtable, which is to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

Fillout is 100% free, and people have been using it for years to not only workaround Airtable’s bugs like this, but more importantly…

Fillout offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including 4 different ways to prefill a form — and 3 of those ways don’t even require you to create a complicated prefill URL at all!

Actually, I lied — Fillout also offers a 5th way to prefill a form, because it allows you to update Airtable records directly with a form, You would use this method if you’re trying to update an existing record in Airtable.

Fillout also offers 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

​@ChrisManchester 

Oh, never mind what I said above. I figured out why my linked record prefill wasn’t working.

This isn’t a bug (at least on my end).

I didn’t realize that I had conditional filtering setup on my linked record field in the Data layer.

This was preventing my form from prefilling the linked record!

So that’s probably your issue as well.

Airtable actually offers 2 different places to filter linked record fields, so be sure to check BOTH places:

1. Filtering on the linked record field itself (in the Data layer).
2. Filtering the linked record field on the form itself (in the right margin under “Selection”).

Make sure that you don’t have any filtering. Or if you do have filtering, make sure that it allows the record that you’re trying to prefill.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

​@TheTimeSavingCo Removing the conditional filter worked! ​@ScottWorld yes, this resolved the issue.

Thank you all!

​@ChrisManchester 

That’s great! If you don’t mind, could you please mark my answer as the solution above? This will help others in the future, because it should rise to the top of the search results.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

​@ChrisManchester No problem, thanks for the link to the base and I’m glad I could help!

For future readers, it turns out that having a dynamic filter on a linked field prevents form prefills from working (Oct 2025)

As a workaround, use ‘Limit record selection to a view’ instead as this works fine with prefills!