!!!

This is genius.

Matt, I really like this proposal for HTML/CSS document merging.

The barrier to entry for implementing this is low and it seems like a pragmatic approach.

Hope to see this, or something similar to it, implemented.

On Airtable’s side, I could see why they would want to do something simpler or altogether code-free so that it was easy for any user to take advantage of a feature like this.

In that case, instead of using HTML/CSS, they could always use an open-source online document editor like WebODF (demo here: http://www.webodf.org/demo/ci/wodotexteditor-0.5.9/localeditor.html) and take a WYSIWYG approach, without having to start from scratch.

Ooh, that’s a really good idea. I hope one of these two approaches gets used!

@Katherine_Duh - Are either of these approaches something that have been kicked around internally already? I’m sure there are complications unforeseen, at least on my part.

this would be really nice, but I can also see the difficulty in implementing something that works for everyone.

but even only a few basic options like header / footer, image size, what to do with long text, etc. would be great.

(also, one record per page)

some day in the future, an extended feature-set like designing forms / reports as you can in filemaker would also be really nice.

Printing options, row, columns addition or filtering is a must for effective printing of the databases.

Can any of the Airtable staff let me know if something like this is being investigated?

I’m worried I’m putting more and more data in Airtable and using wonky, easily-breakable solutions as workarounds.

It would reduce my “Am I putting my eggs in the right basket” anxiety haha.

One day of learning and playing arround with airtable, another day to build my own DB for making cutouts from film scripts - I’m exited about airtable and really would like to switch from Access to this wonderful tool.

Only barrier is that there are no layout options for printing. In my case the requirements are low, for example changing character size and row heigth. And when printing expanded records, hidden fields should not appear.

Hoping for a solution and wishing all the best for airtable team!

YOU GUYS!

I found way to do this for free with Zapier and Google Cloud Print - it accepts HTML markup, and you can get it to print to PDF.

Printing .

As part of our safety program, we are required to print out a copy of our action log once a week, the " Print View" works well for a table. Request : Please allow us to add a Title to the printed copies, I,m surprised this is not already implemented,. Printed Copies should always have a title for what they represent .

Hi Matt,

I would be thrilled to be able to customize my Airtable reports and I’m excited you found a solution. Could you share details of how you got it to work? Thank you!

This. This. This. Please say many things. Explanatory, Tutorial Things. Teach us.

When I’ve got a little time later on this week, I’ll break down the full workflow I set up to make this work.

Please note though, that this a design per-record rather than per-view.

So ideal for generating a document related to record, like for example an invoice. Not so much for building list-type views.

Agreed. The ability to generate a formatted PDF / report from a given record or table would be extremely useful. Sharing a link to Airtable gets the job done a lot of the time but it isn’t always the best solution.

Hi guys,

I’m facing the same issue as I need to print a document from a row in Airtable.

I’ll really be happy if Matt_Sayward can share his solution using Google Cloud Print and zappier.

In the mean time, i’ve done some research by my own.

I may have a clue. Did some of you try to use Ultradox ?

They don’t ave an API working with zapier, but they’ve got an add-on for Google Docs that can generate a document based on Google spreadsheets data (and as you know, you can connect Airtable with G. spreadsheet with zapier or a CSV export).

Looks like to be a cheap solution as Ultradox offers a limited free plan.

Here are some links:

https://www.ultradox.com/

It’s just a clue, but it may help. I’m gonna to try it these week. I’ll keep you updated.

If it’s doesn’t work I’ll do the formatting of my invoices with google spreadsheets, it works too.

So this is the way I’ve set this up.

Go over to Zapier and make a new zap. Make the first step Airtable > New Record and find the Base and Table you want to make your printouts from.

The second step is to choose Google Cloud Print. Use the action ‘Submit Print Job’.

After you’ve authenticated with your Google account, you’ve got the following options to fill out:

Content

This is where you’ll code up your page printout.

Before you type anything in, click the button in the top right of the content box and choose all of the fields you want to display information from in your printout.

They’ll look like this in situ:

Once you’ve added all the fields you need to work with, select them all and copy and paste them into your text editor of choice. They will change from their graphical appearance to something more like {{11915855__Customer Name}}.

In a seperate file on your text editor, write up your document using HTML and CSS. The following document structure worked for me:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<header>

<style>

CSS here

</style>

<body>

HTML content here

</body>

</html>

Keep your code as simple as possible - Act as if you’re coding for email rather than the web. I put all my content in a 100% width table. When the document got turned into a PDF, this told Google Cloud Print to use the full width of the page.

Once you’ve finished making your HTML template, start copying and pasting the Zapier fields into their relevant places.

For example:

<tr><td>Name:</td><td>{{11915855__Customer Name}}</td></tr>

Once you’ve finished all this, select the whole text document and paste it back into the Content field on Zapier.

You’ll see the snippets like the above convert back to the graphical representations, like this:

You’ve now finished the hard part!

Content Type

Choose HTML in the dropdown box

Which Printer

Choose ‘Save to Google Drive’

Title of Print Job

Use your fields here to make a unique name for each file. I used the below structure - do whatever is most appropriate for your use case!

Number of copies

Choose 1

Color or monochrome

Choose color

Duplex

I left this blank

Now, run a test before clicking Finish on your zap. You should see a document appear in your Google Drive populated with the contents of your most recent record.

Let me know if this worked for you!

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<header>

<style>

CSS here

</style>

<body>

HTML content here

</body>

</html>

Hi Matt

Thanks for this input - I have been looking at WepMerge so far and I agree with you about the price - way over the top for a lot of things!

However, with Google Cloud Print can you print multiple rows (typically for invoice lines etc) as you can with WebMerge?

Julian

You can include as many fields from a record as you like, but you can only show one record per document. So as long as all the fields you need are there (Name, address, product, price etc) you should be fine!

Worked for me! Thanks.

OK,

A creative here, I haven’t written HTML in like 20 years. So apologies in advance…

Can anyone provide some SIMPLE code that works with Matt’s workflow above (THANX!) and will allow me to lay out an email/8.5x11 using just type (and emoji), type-formatting, and maybe a linked image (of a barcode)?

I took a stab at it, but Zapier get’s “bargled”. It can’t “fetch the URL”. Not sure where the error lies; and really just want to be able to generate PDF job tickets every time an Airtable record hits a particular view!

From there, it’d be great to move 'em to Dropbox, Slack, email, etc.

THANKS YALL!

A.

Actually, our ideal-ideal is to use an InDesign layout as our template, not HTML. But also don’t want too many integration layers, nor anything running (too) locally.

@Matt_Sayward

I am new here , but have you tried autoCrat google sheet add-on, it works for generating pdf (from google doc template) printout with google sheet records.

I think the only task left is to Zap what I want to print from airtable to a google sheet. (I use this to generate CN22 custom form, and for multirows you need to preprocess the data with Merge Values)

Yes, it will make everyone happy if all this can be done by formatable views printout inside airtable.

We also really need this feature on a per-record basis. We don’t even need a design, just the ability to include or exclude fields in a condensed, attractive format. The print layout as it is now creates a 4-5 page printout out of what should be a one-sheet report. My designers are scrolling through several pages trying to find details in the PDF that they used to be able (pre-Airtable) to glance at one page to see.

Here, here!

A super-simple, black and white print view, in which we could show/hide fields, ideally dragging them around on top of a grid (to reduce or leverage negative/white space) would meet our immediate needs. 8.5x11 is fine to start, so long as PDF export is supported.

Right now, we simply can’t relay “Job Tickets” to our Design team from Airtable. The print and email record layouts are a little on the fugly side (at least to graphic designers), but much more importantly, and to Sarah’s point, they waste a TON of space.

Same goes for forms too, actually; they do not leverage screen real estate fully.

Not just 8.5x11 - some of us use A4!

Fair, obviously (and I thought about that for a split-sec before posting…).

Most of our team’s print needs are 11x17 or 13x19 actually. But for Job Tickets, we’d lean toward Letter. Though the output would be a PDF (to be Slacked/emailed), so A4 would meet our needs in this instance.

Long-term, a range of page sizes is needed, for sure.