Advice Needed: How to Generate Thank You Notes in Bulk

Are you referring to a mail merge? Like having the same basic document but needing different names in certain points in the doc?

Yes, a mail merge. I’d like to use the same basic document but needing names, dates and donations amounts inserted in certain points in the document.  Thank you for asking

Nancy,

You can achieve this with a (or set of) formula fields.  you may have to break your template up into various sections.  If you’re paying for AI capability, then this is an easy and ideal application of an AI agent field.

Brian

Hi ​@NancyJ ,

The primary option that Airtable gives for creating mail merge documents is Page Designer, but it has been mostly abandoned by Airtable and it has many limitations.

Here is a partial list of limitations with Page Designer:

• Page Designer can’t be automated in any way.
• Page Designer doesn’t work in interfaces.
• 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 can’t insert completed PDF documents into attachment fields. You have to do this manually.
• Page Designer can’t elegantly handle documents that aren’t exactly one page in length.
• Page Designer layouts can’t be copied to other tables or bases.

Alternatively, Airtable’s automations give you the ability to create a Google Docs document, but it has serious limitations as well.

In general, if you want to automate the process of creating a document or a PDF file (or if you want to automatically attach the PDF file 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 typically need to turn to a 3rd-party app for that.

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

1. DocsAutomator — creates Google Docs documents or PDF files.
2. Typeflow — creates PDF files.
3. DocuMint — creates PDF files.
4. Make’s integrations — which can be integrated with any document-creation app or PDF-creation app of your choosing, such as CraftMyPDF. You can even integrate 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.
5. 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.

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

Thank you. This information is very helpful. 

i use Zapier (similar to Make but a bit simpler/less powerful) to create thank you letters based on a Google docs template. i have a single-select field in my base that i can set for donations that i want to create letters for & an attachment field to store the PDFs of the letters. the Zap triggers when a donation enters a view filtered for donations that are ready to have their letters created, it creates them, uploads them, and puts them into my “drafts” folder in my gmail. then i can review them, add any personalization to the email & hit send. if you wanted to skip the drafts step & just email them, you can also have the Zap do that.

I would set this up as a small review queue rather than trying to make the document generation step do everything.

A pattern that works well for mailed thank-you notes is:

1. Add status fields on the donation record: ready to generate, draft created, reviewed/printed, mailed.
2. Create a filtered view for only the donations that are ready for letters.
3. Use a template step to create one document per donation, not one giant merged file, so each record can keep its own attachment/link and status.
4. Save the generated draft back to the donation record, preferably in a dedicated attachment or URL field.
5. After you review and print it, update the status from the same Airtable view or interface.

If the letters need to stay editable before printing, I would lean toward Google Docs or Word-style document generation first, then export/print as PDF only at the end. If the layout is final and you just need a printable artifact, generating PDFs directly is simpler. The key Airtable piece is keeping the generated file and the completion status on the same donation record so you can always see which acknowledgements are still waiting.

Cheapest way to handle this would be with Make + a Google Doc Template I reckon.  You’d have an automation trigger on Airtable to hit a Make webhook, which would then create the personalized Google Doc template for you with the person’s name etc, and then put the link to that doc into the triggering record.  This would let you click into the doc and update it if needed

If like 90% of the time you don’t need to update it you could also get the Make scenario to just upload the PDF into the record too