Beyond frustrated with buttons in Interfaces

Not sure what you mean… button fields can be placed onto a record in interfaces, just like you can place any other field onto a record.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant 

For further reference:

 

I guess that is NOT what you mean?

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

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel ​​​​​​​

If you’re trying to run a script in a Scripting Extension via a button, perhaps you could use a checkbox field that’s visible in your Interface instead that’ll trigger an automation with the same script refactored for the Run a Script action

You could also try an Interface button that activates an automation with the Run a Script action too, and you could set that up with either:

1. Record Review layout + a button
2. Blank layout + record picker + button

If you’re trying to activate an extension via a button I’m afraid I don’t think that’s possible at this time.  If you’re doing SendGrid or Twilio you could probably use a Run a Script action / third party automation tool to help you trigger off of a field instead though if that helps!

Have a look at the videos attached:

Button in Data view: https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/video/46324286?key=634afc4cff3b8752fcce471fe66b7bfb

Same Button in Interfaces view (not clickable): https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/video/46324205?key=6a464100a14de59280e019ed4fae8efa

Ah, okay, you didn’t mention that your button is opening the Page Designer extension.

Extensions are not yet supported in interfaces — they will only work in the Data layer.

Furthermore, the Page Designer extension is very limited. Here is a partial list of limitations with Page Designer:

• Page Designer can’t be automated in any way.
• Page Designer can’t create PDF files on its own — you need to use your computer’s print or PDF functions for that.
• Page Designer doesn’t yet work in interfaces (but maybe it will at some point in 2026).
• Page Designer can’t insert documents into attachment fields. You have to do this manually.
• Page Designer can’t effectively create documents that are more than 1 page in length.
• Page Designer layouts can’t be copied to other tables or bases.

If you want to automate the process of creating a document/PDF and automatically attach the document/PDF to the record in Airtable, or if you want to generate multi-page PDF files from Airtable, or if you want to generate PDF files from interfaces, you would need to turn to a 3rd-party app for that.

Here are a few popular 3rd-party apps for automatically generating PDF documents from Airtable:

1. DocuMint — the original document creation app for Airtable. Creates PDF files.
    
2. DocsAutomator — creates Google Docs documents or PDF files.
    
3. 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.
    
4. Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable — 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.
    
5. Typeflow or DocuPotion — I haven’t personally used these apps yet, but I will be checking them out in the future.

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

Yeah, you’re trying to activate an extension via a button and that’s just not supported currently I’m afraid

A possible workaround is to create a dynamic URL that’ll open a page with that specific cell highlighted so that you can open Page Designer immediately.  It’s an extra click and whoever’s clicking it’s going to need base access though, so I don’t know how feasible that is

If that doesn’t work, your only alternative is to use a third party solution to:

1. Create the PDF for you via an automation that triggers from a button click or something
2. Upload it into an attachment field that you make accessible within that same Interface. 

Check out DocsAutomator for that (https://www.docsautomator.co/), they’ve got a free tier where you can experiment with it