Would it be possible to make it impossible to create blank records in Airtable - it’s so easy to create these that bases become littered with them. It’s even worse if you accidentally add a record in a grouped view because linked record are created which are otherwise blank.
One way to do this would be to give the user the option of making one or more fields ‘required’ - and without them the record would not submit.
I find having to constantly delete such empty records quite annoying!
We created a tool that can help automate the process of deleting blank records. It doesn’t solve the autonumbering issue though.
Oh man, I would love to be able to add friction/restrict row creation to overt intentful actions like clicking a button. It’s so easy to pollute the view and the UI spazzes out because it’s trying to sort against the multiple prioritization rules I have in place. +1-ing this like crazy!
I think I find a hack to solve this issue which require the creation of one empty additional table that I call Locker and which contains on two attribute (locker and creation date). My locker table will not have any records.
Step 1: creating the Locker Table with the attributes (locker and creation date).
Step 2: Let say I have three primary tables namely TableA, TableB and TableC on my base. I link each of these tables with my Empty Locker table and choose my “locker” attribute as a lookup field
Step 3: TableA, TableB and TableC based on the newly created “locker” look up field (if you did previously have some groups, remote them first)
Step 4: Restore your previous grouping if there was any
Step 5: Hide the two newly added fields from TableA, TableB and TableC (cause these field won’t have any record)
Now the question is how to prevent creating empty records from the Locker table itself?
If you have a premium account you can just lock this view so no one can either add or delete any record. If you don’t have a premium account you can just group this table based on the “creation date” attribute
Every time I run into an Airtable issue and google it, I find this forum.
And every time
I’m starting to think this forum is the dumping ground for the community to try helping each other without having any real power to improve the product, until an actual airtable team triages through these and prioritises them.
Please spend time on quality of life improvements. If it weren’t for attachments, I’d ditch Airtable.
I’m using sheets with grouped views and creating accidental empty records happens all the time.
I’m sharing exactly the same feeling, but as long my clients are insisting on using AirTable, there is not much I can do besides making workarounds and trying to live with the issues…
+20Fast forward from 2017 to 2022, the issue still persists :man_facepalming:
You can now use table permissions to prevent creation of records in a table.
You can now use table permissions to prevent creation of records in a table.
@ScottWorld, that’s not what I want, and from what I can see not what most people here want. What we want to prevent is the (accidental) creation of blank records. The solution is pretty straightforward - we need an equivalent to the MySQL “NOT NULL constraint”.
+20@ScottWorld, that’s not what I want, and from what I can see not what most people here want. What we want to prevent is the (accidental) creation of blank records. The solution is pretty straightforward - we need an equivalent to the MySQL “NOT NULL constraint”.
Airtable doesn’t offer record validations. All new records start off as blank, and you can’t tell when somebody is done interacting with a record, so you’d have to come up with some other way to delete blank records after the fact — either manually or via an automation. If you go down the automation route, this can currently only be automated by writing a custom script or using an external automation tool like Integromat.
You can always support@airtable.com to ask them to add validations into their product, but my guess is that it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Airtable doesn’t offer record validations. All new records start off as blank, and you can’t tell when somebody is done interacting with a record, so you’d have to come up with some other way to delete blank records after the fact — either manually or via an automation. If you go down the automation route, this can currently only be automated by writing a custom script or using an external automation tool like Integromat.
You can always support@airtable.com to ask them to add validations into their product, but my guess is that it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
I see what you say. Then again, you don’t get $735 million Series F funding if you’re doing something that’s easy to do :winking_face:
You can now use table permissions to prevent creation of records in a table.
Is this for API creation as well? What I like to see is no manual (blank) creation, but creation via API allowed.
+20Is this for API creation as well? What I like to see is no manual (blank) creation, but creation via API allowed.
The REST API uses the permissions of whatever user account you assign to it, so you can control it that way.
Perhaps one way to reduce blank records:
Add the ‘User CSS’ chrome extension available from the web store (free), then add the following style, which hides the insertion row at the bottom so you have to click on the add button:
.rowInsertionEnabled {
display: none !important;
}
I belive this is a reasonable fix
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