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Are there ways to prevent duplicate record creation through interface forms?

  • November 26, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 121 views
R
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Hi there,
I have a table with unique numeric IDs in the first column.
Ideally, people will input data in that table through a form interface, but i really need to be sure that people are not inputting the same ID twice, so that if they do form submission is not sent and we show an error that says that they cannot input a duplicated ID.

I have not found any ways to do so anywhere on the net, the only way seems to be throuh Mini Extensions, but i would prefer to not use too many different providers, that’s why i’m using Interfaces.
Since we already use Softr i was considering moving the whole interface there, but i cannot find any evidence that Softr provides this kind of check.
Any help?

J

3 replies

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Genius
  • November 27, 2022

You can’t do that with Airtable’s native forms, but your #1 best bet for this is to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable because it lets you prevent duplicate form submissions based on any text fields (or email fields) that you specify.

Fillout also offers hundreds of other features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to prevent duplicate form submissions, update Airtable records using a form, create custom PDF files from a form submission, accept payments on forms, display Airtable lookup fields on forms, create new linked records on a form, control access to a form via SSO or email domains or a list of email addresses stored in Airtable, 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:

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

R
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  • radhe
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • November 27, 2022

Welcome to the community, @radhe!

This is not a feature of Airtable’s forms.

You may want to check out JotForm, which offers this feature:

JotForm also has native integration with Airtable, so your form submissions will go directly into Airtable. If you need more advanced integration between JotForm and Airtable, check out Make:


Hi Scott,
Thank you very much for the answer and the welcome!
By any chance do you know if Softr has this feature?
Because i want to give users a unique point of entry to use all the interfaces i’m creating, so i don’t want to use external tools to create just the form, and then have users move back to interfaces to see what was the result of their inputs.

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Genius
  • November 27, 2022

Hi Scott,
Thank you very much for the answer and the welcome!
By any chance do you know if Softr has this feature?
Because i want to give users a unique point of entry to use all the interfaces i’m creating, so i don’t want to use external tools to create just the form, and then have users move back to interfaces to see what was the result of their inputs.

 

No, Softr doesn’t have this feature, but you don’t need to send your users to a different website.

If you’re using Softr as your frontend for your users, you can simply embed your Fillout form into your Softr website.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

 

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