I am using Airtable for project management. I am trying to shift some of our proposal generation to Airtable and see some promise with the Page Designer Feature.
Just wondering – is it possible to generate multiple pages from a single record? Basically, for each job, I have several components that take up most of a sheet of paper. I need to have a summary table of work to be completed below that, along with terms and conditions.
Our current proposals are 6 pages long using Microsoft Word
Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?
Page 5 / 6
Airtable devs, we will keep screaming for multi-page in Page Designer until you RESPOND!
Airtable devs, we will keep screaming for multi-page in Page Designer until you RESPOND!
I don’t think they will respond unless people to threaten to leave Airtable or actually do leave because of this. I spent weeks setting up Airtable, learning it, and integrating it into our company. It never even occurred to me that page designer would be this limited. That’s on me for not investigating more. But it doesn’t matter, this may not be the solution for us and we are going to look elsewhere and cancel unless Page Designer is updated or we find an alternative solution that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg like Docupilot or Formstack. We’re currently looking at Kintone, Smartsheet, and a few others.
I don’t think they will respond unless people to threaten to leave Airtable or actually do leave because of this. I spent weeks setting up Airtable, learning it, and integrating it into our company. It never even occurred to me that page designer would be this limited. That’s on me for not investigating more. But it doesn’t matter, this may not be the solution for us and we are going to look elsewhere and cancel unless Page Designer is updated or we find an alternative solution that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg like Docupilot or Formstack. We’re currently looking at Kintone, Smartsheet, and a few others.
Yep, it can get extremely pricey to use Airtable if you need to generate custom documents and/or automate the creation of documents such as PDF files, Word documents, custom JPG images, custom PNG images, QR Codes, barcodes, etc.
If you need custom designable & printable layouts, you will likely need to move beyond the “spreadsheet apps“ that you’re looking at (of which Airtable is one), and upgrade to a genuine database platform like Apple’s FileMaker.
p.s. I am both a professional Airtable consultant and a Certified FileMaker Developer. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert to help you with any of it, please feel free to contact me through my website at ScottWorld.com.
+1 for this, there must be some way to print more than 1 page :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:
any updates on this???
Just a thought here, when “Printing” a Page, you can set the height to be printed for each page.
For example, you can set your Page Designer page to be 4000 px tall (a very long single page).
But when printing, you can set the page height to be 1000px per page, resulting in 4 pages in the final PDF.
Using this technique, you can measure out your blocks to fit into the appropriate page breaks.
Just a thought here, when “Printing” a Page, you can set the height to be printed for each page.
For example, you can set your Page Designer page to be 4000 px tall (a very long single page).
But when printing, you can set the page height to be 1000px per page, resulting in 4 pages in the final PDF.
Using this technique, you can measure out your blocks to fit into the appropriate page breaks.
This is the solution. It would be nice if it were automatic, but this works and once set up will provide simple functionality. I would add that I’m having trouble printing from Safari for some reason. I get blank documents, in addition to a variety of unpredictable results that vary according to which Page Designer document I’m trying to print. I thought it was Page Designer, but it’s Safari. Chrome prints just fine and will work well with the process you outlined here.
I’ve been needing improvements to Page Designer for the past forever. I don’t understand why Airtable don’t keep adding new features to it, or if there’s too much legacy tied into it, create a new app called Document Designer.
Importantly, whatever Airtable release, it must have dynamic record/list/view placement, so that the output document dynamically and automatically grows with the number of records/views. And just as importantly, it must support both the Group and Filter features.
It’s so frustrating having to look for a solution for this issue, considering the amount of other users also needing this.
Hey all,
We have created Cumulo Docs which is capable of rendering
Multiple Pages without printer format adjustment would be excellent. Thanks, Airtable Team!
I’ve been needing improvements to Page Designer for the past forever. I don’t understand why Airtable don’t keep adding new features to it, or if there’s too much legacy tied into it, create a new app called Document Designer.
Importantly, whatever Airtable release, it must have dynamic record/list/view placement, so that the output document dynamically and automatically grows with the number of records/views. And just as importantly, it must support both the Group and Filter features.
It’s so frustrating having to look for a solution for this issue, considering the amount of other users also needing this.
I am also looking to print multiple child records for a header record that are more than can fit on one page. If anyone finds a solution, please post it to the thread. For now, it looks like it is simply not something that Airtable supports.
How has this not been addressed since 2018 is this ever going to get looked at?
I am also looking to print multiple child records for a header record that are more than can fit on one page. If anyone finds a solution, please post it to the thread. For now, it looks like it is simply not something that Airtable supports.
You can try the On2Air Google Docs integration.
It automatically generates a Google Docs file based on your Airtable data. You can use our template approach to expand it to the size you need.
Haha Typical Airtable : feature requested by a very large amount of people since… forever and nothing has been done.
Airtable ! Please get a team on this !!! WE NEEDS IT PRECIOUS !
@Airtable_Administrat I feel like being able to print multiple pages would be a very useful feature especially since this issue is already going on since 2018, this is really urgent, for me since we are trying to use this option to have everything under one roof.
+1 This would def be a game changer!
Airtable stated that they are working on Page Designer 2.0 at the DareTable conference last weekend. No promises of specific features and no timeline, but they are definitely working on a new version.
Hi everyone,
Our team was looking for a way to print multiple page documents and send them to Adobe Sign. Previously, we had done this manually using Page Designer, but when the number of documents to create increased, it just became unusable. Plumsail Documents proved to be a great alternative and also helped automate the routine process.
We will definitely continue using it until the Page Designer 2.0 is released. If anyone is interested, check out the comparison article below:
The solution is paid but offers a free one-month trial.
Airtable, how have you not done this yet? My company is evaluating the product right now and this is exactly the kind of thing that is make-or-break whether we go with the product. Everyone wants this feature. It should really be basic to the product. Why don’t you create it?
Airtable, how have you not done this yet? My company is evaluating the product right now and this is exactly the kind of thing that is make-or-break whether we go with the product. Everyone wants this feature. It should really be basic to the product. Why don’t you create it?
Yeah, it’s pretty disappointing that Airtable ignores most (if not all) customer feedback.
Thankfully, 3rd-party developers have come to the rescue to answer hundreds of unfulfilled customer needs.
So for automating the creation of both single-page and multi-page documents, you can turn to solutions such as DocuMint or On2Air: Actions or Make.
I’m well-versed in all of these products, so if you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld.
There are many many other products that do this, too — my list above is not an exhaustive list. Someone posted the other day that they loved PlumSail for this, which was the first time I had heard of it.
Yeah, it’s pretty disappointing that Airtable ignores most (if not all) customer feedback.
Thankfully, 3rd-party developers have come to the rescue to answer hundreds of unfulfilled customer needs.
So for automating the creation of both single-page and multi-page documents, you can turn to solutions such as DocuMint or On2Air: Actions or Make.
I’m well-versed in all of these products, so if you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld.
There are many many other products that do this, too — my list above is not an exhaustive list. Someone posted the other day that they loved PlumSail for this, which was the first time I had heard of it.
Airtable do listen and action feedback. I’ve seen a few of my ideas implemented over the years. Frustratingly however, the two elephants in the room I face are;
Page Designer lacking support for Multi-page documents and dynamically scaling grids, and auto-PDF’ing and attaching to records.
Prerequisit for Linked Fields, allowing one field to dynamically limit the available Linked record assignment.
Just as painful as not having Page Designer do all the (obvious) things, is the non-stop hawkers on these forums proposing their 3rd party solutions. We trust Airtable with data, but can the same level of trust be had with 3rd parties? (not to forget another subscription cost too…).
At this stage in the game, I’m inclined spending my holidays building my own server to take an Airtable record JSON dump and format that into a pretty document that’s re-attached to the record.
Airtable do listen and action feedback. I’ve seen a few of my ideas implemented over the years. Frustratingly however, the two elephants in the room I face are;
Page Designer lacking support for Multi-page documents and dynamically scaling grids, and auto-PDF’ing and attaching to records.
Prerequisit for Linked Fields, allowing one field to dynamically limit the available Linked record assignment.
Just as painful as not having Page Designer do all the (obvious) things, is the non-stop hawkers on these forums proposing their 3rd party solutions. We trust Airtable with data, but can the same level of trust be had with 3rd parties? (not to forget another subscription cost too…).
At this stage in the game, I’m inclined spending my holidays building my own server to take an Airtable record JSON dump and format that into a pretty document that’s re-attached to the record.
Yes, this is a big one!
Airtable do listen and action feedback. I’ve seen a few of my ideas implemented over the years. Frustratingly however, the two elephants in the room I face are;
Page Designer lacking support for Multi-page documents and dynamically scaling grids, and auto-PDF’ing and attaching to records.
Prerequisit for Linked Fields, allowing one field to dynamically limit the available Linked record assignment.
Just as painful as not having Page Designer do all the (obvious) things, is the non-stop hawkers on these forums proposing their 3rd party solutions. We trust Airtable with data, but can the same level of trust be had with 3rd parties? (not to forget another subscription cost too…).
At this stage in the game, I’m inclined spending my holidays building my own server to take an Airtable record JSON dump and format that into a pretty document that’s re-attached to the record.
You are free to build out your own system, just as other third party systems have built out their systems. They use resources that are available to the public.
You don’t even need your own server for this.
If you choose to use Google docs for you template, you don’t need any other services other than Google and Airtable.
If you choose to go the html to pdf route, you will need a service that converts the html to a pdf at a publicly accessible url. The rest can be done with scripting within Airtable.
On the other hand, coming up with the code for these systems is hard work. And these third party services take care of a lot of details that can be a lot of work to code.
Bill recently started a thread about switching between systems for creating pdf attachments from record data.
Your personal level of trust is up to you. However, I have not heard of any of the major players in this realm (creating documents from record data) having any security issues. They all also have public privacy policies (as do I), and there is little motivation for any of them do do anything nefarious with your data.
Airtable do listen and action feedback. I’ve seen a few of my ideas implemented over the years. Frustratingly however, the two elephants in the room I face are;
Page Designer lacking support for Multi-page documents and dynamically scaling grids, and auto-PDF’ing and attaching to records.
Prerequisit for Linked Fields, allowing one field to dynamically limit the available Linked record assignment.
Just as painful as not having Page Designer do all the (obvious) things, is the non-stop hawkers on these forums proposing their 3rd party solutions. We trust Airtable with data, but can the same level of trust be had with 3rd parties? (not to forget another subscription cost too…).
At this stage in the game, I’m inclined spending my holidays building my own server to take an Airtable record JSON dump and format that into a pretty document that’s re-attached to the record.
No, not at all. Security experts are quick to point out that even if the security policies are equal, each third-party integration increases the attack surfaces as a factorial of the connections. Just three integrations is 24 times more risky ((4 x 3 x 2 x 1) - 1) than no third party integrations.
UPDATE: My math is wrong; with three integrations it’s 5 times more risky ((3 x 2 x 1) - 1). Airtable itself cannot exacerbate it’s own risk threshold just by conveying or receiving data from another source.
And with that you will probably increase security risks even higher. Do you really believe you can outpace a SOC2 level security stack on your own? To do this well it will cost you about 50 cents per document.
If you really want to build a secure data-to-PDF reporting system for sensitive information you’ll use a SOC2 certified service that provides signed URLs with a shelf-life of under 30 seconds for one penny per document and perform all processes in an Airtable script.
You are free to build out your own system, just as other third party systems have built out their systems. They use resources that are available to the public.
You don’t even need your own server for this.
If you choose to use Google docs for you template, you don’t need any other services other than Google and Airtable.
If you choose to go the html to pdf route, you will need a service that converts the html to a pdf at a publicly accessible url. The rest can be done with scripting within Airtable.
On the other hand, coming up with the code for these systems is hard work. And these third party services take care of a lot of details that can be a lot of work to code.
Bill recently started a thread about switching between systems for creating pdf attachments from record data.
Your personal level of trust is up to you. However, I have not heard of any of the major players in this realm (creating documents from record data) having any security issues. They all also have public privacy policies (as do I), and there is little motivation for any of them do do anything nefarious with your data.
I get your point, but nefarious actions by the vendors is not typically the big threat. It’s the added exposure when moving data from point A to point B. Vastly, data breaches are external in origin and exacerbated by integration connectors whose traffic presents a heat map that attracts bots which assemble the topology of the activity and then humans determine the probability those connections will pay dividends if hacked.
