Recent change : impossible to add new record although the option is activated...

Hello @Nadege_BOINNARD, we are rolling out a refreshed linked record picker in Interfaces which you are seeing here. If you start typing the name of the record you are looking for/want to create, the option to create a new record with that name will appear below the search results.

Hello Patricia. But this doesn't work... My primary field in my Payments table is a calculated field... So I cannot "create" a new name with it. This is NOT a good solution at all... And many of us are using calculated fields as primary linked fields... 

@Patricia_Saylor , this new record picker was not well thought out. It seems to have been designed by people who have not spent much time using Airtable. This breaks dozens of my customers’ workflows. We need the ability to always have the add new record option available at all times. If the primary field in the linked table is a formula field, people need the ability to add the new record so they can fill out the other fields. Please do not break things that were working perfectly fine before, and instead please focus on improving things that people have been requesting for years.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

@ScottWorld What you said !!!!!

Indeed @Patricia_Saylor  :

1) First do no harm
2) Fix what everyone is screaming about !!! FOR YEARS INDEED !! 

Like randomly : uhhhh, let's see, an interface button that can actually open extensions ? For those who use Page Designer (like 99% of people using Airtable and use page designer for invoices, contracts, templates, etc...). 

@Nadege_BOINNARD 

Sadly, Airtable has a long legacy of ignoring its customers.

Instead of improving Page Designer, Airtable completely abandoned Page Designer shortly after releasing it in 2018. Airtable has made zero improvements to it since 2018. It is still a version 1.0 product.

Most Airtable customers have stopped using Page Designer out of necessity, because Page Designer doesn’t support multi-page documents, it can’t be automated in any way, it doesn’t support PDF creation (Airtable forces you to manually use whatever PDF tools you have installed on your computer), it doesn’t work within Airtable interfaces, and there are hundreds of other major limitations with Page Designer.

So most people use external tools to automatically create, print, and email their Airtable documents.

For those people who are looking for:

• automatic PDF generation from Airtable
• automatic document generation from Airtable
• more reliable & more powerful printing from Airtable
• automatic emailing of the documents after they are generated

Your best bet typically involves outsourcing your document creation & printing to 3rd-party apps.

For example, you may want to turn to a Chrome browser extension such as GoFullPage that can create full-page screenshots of your page and turn those full-page screenshots into PDF files that you can then print.

Otherwise, these 3rd-party apps can be fully automated, and will create perfectly-formatted documents for you that you can then print, email, etc.:

1. DocuMint — the original document creation app for Airtable. Creates PDF files. You can also get charts and graphs embedded into your document by using QuickChart.

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 or Google Sheets spreadsheets. 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.

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 @ScottWorld 

Thanks for this detailed post. I am really annoyed with Page Designer too although I did manage to make it several pages long (as many as I want really), by increasing the pixels... So that was an interesting workaround.

It does work fine for many of my small business clients who are happy not to spend an extra subscription on a third party tool. As much as I can I try to find solutions within the Airtable ecosystem with native integrations (like Gmail / Google Calendar). But indeed... people are much more comfortable with dealing with GDocs, Gsheets etc. 

I'll check all your links. I'm of course super familiar with Make which is quite splendid 🙂 

My dream app (because it's a regular client request) : a "PRINT & SEND" button on an interface that will create the final document, make a PDF, upload it in the designated attachment field and check "send contract" box in the base, which will trigger an automation that sends the contract with the appropriate email. Same for invoicing. Clients complain that they need to 1) go to page designer 2) print to PDF 3) upload the PDF in the field and check the "send contract" box 🙂 (when they all know they've already saved an hour of their time doing everything by hand but hey, automation is addictive and you always want more hahaha !)

Thank you anyway. Hoping Airtable comes to its senses as moves like the one this post is made to point out transforms me into a very pissed off ninja 🙂 

Hi folks,

We appreciate all your feedback, and we plan to address some of the feedback you have given us. We’re temporarily rolling back some updates we made to the design of the Linked Record picker in Interfaces as we further iterate.

Here's some context as to why we started on the journey in the first place:

1. We wanted to improve data density, so that you could scan more records at once.
2. These changes will help unlock additional exciting features coming, such as dynamic filtering of linked records.

Please continue to give us feedback on the product, and we hope to share some of these exciting new features with you in the new year.

And GUESS WHAT. 

Airtable is DOING IT AGAIN. Exact same thing. Exact same THING !! I am BEYOND PISSED.

Clients are ALL OVER MY BACK.

As we speak, I am now going into an intensive crash course on AppSheet. I think I've had quite about my dose of Airtable now. Migrating for something more reliable that develops features that everyone wants instead of trying to "improve" stuff that works perfectly. Today was definitely the straw that broke the camel's back. And I am an early Airtable adopter and a great enthusiast. But enough is enough.