A change just occurred which is making my life much more difficult. Entering records, cannot tab anymore.

THANK YOU!

I recently started using Airtable and one of the first things that I noticed was that I couldn’t tab down when entering info in a column. 

Super frustrating.

Following discussion.

Interesting, you are totally right, I noticed this like 2 weeks ago or so. I had chalked it up to having switched from Chrome to Firefox, but it’s the same in Chrome. It has affected my site analytics tracking table that I update weekly.

I could see some utility in this change if your using linked record fields that contain multiple links, but it also acts the same for 1-1 links, which is annoying.

I’m glad to know I’m not just going crazy and others are noticing this as well.

Hopefully there is a way for this feedback to now reach the developers so they can react or perhaps explain the thinking behind it.

Be sure to report this to support@airtable.com, and post back here with what they say.

Additionally, you can directly submit feedback to the product team through this form. They don’t reply to the form submissions, but they actually do read them.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant 

re: hit enter to activate it, press tab until the search + is selected, hit enter again, then do a search

As a datapoint, if I’m on a linked field and hit a key the search immediately comes up  In the gif, for the first linked field I’m hitting enter twice to open the search before search, and for the second linked field I just immediately press 3 and that opens search

This happens for both Firefox and Chrome on MacOS, so maybe it works differently on Windows?

re: use arrow keys to get back to the start, then navigate to the first cell

May want to try adding a Tampermonkey script to help specifically with the left arrow key bit!  I’ve put together a script that’ll automatically figure out how many left arrows are needed to get you to the first cell and will press those automatically

In the gif below, my keypresses are:

1. Right arrow
2. Right arrow
3. 3 - Searches for record ‘3’
4. ENTER - Select record ‘3’
5. SHIFT + ENTER - Create new row
6. CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT - This activates the Tampermonkey script which hits left arrow key as many times as needed to get to the first cell

Tampermonkey is a browser extension that lets you add code to any page you want to add functionality to it, in this case, helping us with the tabbing

You could also make it hit SHIFT + ENTER for you before hitting the left arrow keys to make it even more hands off really

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Airtable go to first visible cell
// @match        https://airtable.com/*
// @match        https://*.airtable.com/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function () {
  function pressKey(key, code, keyCode) {
    const target = document.activeElement || document.body;

    const opts = {
      key,
      code,
      keyCode,
      which: keyCode,
      bubbles: true,
      cancelable: true,
    };

    target.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent("keydown", opts));
    target.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent("keyup", opts));
  }

  function getSelectedCell() {
    return document.querySelector(".cell.selected.cursor")
  }

  function goToFirstCell() {
    const cell = getSelectedCell();
    if (!cell) return;

    const colIndex = Number(cell.dataset.columnindex);
    if (!Number.isFinite(colIndex)) return;

    pressKey("Escape", "Escape", 27);

    const leftPresses = Math.max(0, colIndex - 1);

    for (let i = 0; i < leftPresses; i++) {
      setTimeout(() => {
        pressKey("ArrowLeft", "ArrowLeft", 37);
      }, 50 + i * 30);
    }
  }

  // ctrl+shift+left
  window.addEventListener("keydown", (e) => {
    if (e.ctrlKey && e.shiftKey && e.key === "ArrowLeft") {
      e.preventDefault();
      goToFirstCell();
    }
  });
})();

Having the same issue last 24 hours, to say its slowing down entry is an understatement. Speed and muscle memory and its tripping me up! Anyone solved this yet inside Airtable?

I have sent an email to support with this thread link in hopes for some visibility.  If anyone is having the same issue and wants to provide details, it might help.

Curious if anyone else has confirmed if there is a difference between MacOS and Windows?  I only have windows desktops and it occurs the same for me on any of them.

Quick update with response via email from support on this topic, sharing for others following:

“This is something that our engineering team is aware of, and they have confirmed that this is expected keyboard-navigation behaviour in Grid views for cells that contain multiple interactive controls, such as certain linked record and multi-select fields.

When you enter one of these cells with the keyboard, focus moves into the controls within the cell itself. From there, Tab moves between the interactive elements in that cell, and Esc returns you to the normal Grid view navigation mode. In practice, this means that after making a selection in these field types, you may need to press Esc before continuing with arrow-key navigation.

For now, this has been logged as feedback with our engineering team and it is on their radar for future improvements. “

Thank you for the feedback - Ive been using this for three years now though and its only just started doing this the last 72 hours? 

Kris, you nailed exactly what changed — Airtable rebuilt the grid so each linked-record cell now traps keyboard focus inside itself (it's tied to their screen-reader accessibility work). To answer your direct question: there's no native toggle to turn it off, and from what staff have signaled, they're unlikely to revert it since it's part of their accessibility compliance.
The Esc → arrow → re-enter dance you described is exactly the time-drain I hit too (also hundreds of rows a week). Since Airtable won't roll it back, I started building a small Chrome extension that intercepts Tab/Enter in the grid and restores the old spreadsheet movement — next cell / next row, skipping read-only columns. It's pure client-side, nothing leaves your browser.
It's not on the store yet — I'm trying to gauge how many people hit this before I finish it. If you want it when it ships, I put up a page with a quick demo + email box: fasttabchrome.netlify.app
Either way, you're definitely not alone on this one.

Taking someones great idea ref tampermonkey - Ive installed and got the below code working on Firefox. Its a little clunky but works. You may need to refresh airtable every now and again if youve closed your laptop etc:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Airtable restore Tab grid navigation
// @match        https://airtable.com/*
// @match        https://*.airtable.com/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function () {
  function getSelectedCell() {
    return (
      document.querySelector(".cell.selected.cursor") ||
      document.querySelector(".cell.selected") ||
      document.querySelector('[role="gridcell"][aria-selected="true"]')
    );
  }

  function getCellPosition(cell) {
    const row =
      Number(cell.dataset.rowindex) ||
      Number(cell.getAttribute("data-rowindex")) ||
      Number(cell.getAttribute("aria-rowindex"));

    const col =
      Number(cell.dataset.columnindex) ||
      Number(cell.getAttribute("data-columnindex")) ||
      Number(cell.getAttribute("aria-colindex"));

    if (!Number.isFinite(row) || !Number.isFinite(col)) return null;
    return { row, col };
  }

  function findCell(row, col) {
    return (
      document.querySelector(`.cell[data-rowindex="${row}"][data-columnindex="${col}"]`) ||
      document.querySelector(`[role="gridcell"][aria-rowindex="${row}"][aria-colindex="${col}"]`)
    );
  }

  function clickCell(cell) {
    if (!cell) return false;

    cell.scrollIntoView({ block: "nearest", inline: "nearest" });

    const rect = cell.getBoundingClientRect();
    const x = rect.left + Math.min(24, rect.width / 2);
    const y = rect.top + rect.height / 2;

    ["mousedown", "mouseup", "click"].forEach((type) => {
      cell.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(type, {
        bubbles: true,
        cancelable: true,
        clientX: x,
        clientY: y,
        button: 0,
      }));
    });

    return true;
  }

  function sendEscape() {
    const target = document.activeElement || document.body;

    ["keydown", "keyup"].forEach((type) => {
      target.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent(type, {
        key: "Escape",
        code: "Escape",
        keyCode: 27,
        which: 27,
        bubbles: true,
        cancelable: true,
      }));
    });
  }

  function moveCell(deltaRow, deltaCol) {
    const selected = getSelectedCell();
    if (!selected) return;

    const pos = getCellPosition(selected);
    if (!pos) return;

    sendEscape();

    setTimeout(() => {
      let target = findCell(pos.row + deltaRow, pos.col + deltaCol);

      if (!target && deltaCol > 0) {
        target = findCell(pos.row + 1, 1);
      }

      if (!target && deltaCol < 0) {
        target = findCell(pos.row - 1, pos.col);
      }

      clickCell(target);
    }, 50);
  }

  window.addEventListener("keydown", (event) => {
    if (event.key !== "Tab") return;

    const selected = getSelectedCell();
    if (!selected) return;

    event.preventDefault();
    event.stopPropagation();

    if (event.shiftKey) {
      moveCell(0, -1);
    } else {
      moveCell(0, 1);
    }
  }, true);
})();

Inabilty to tab through cells is such a workflow killer 

Just wanted to chime in and say I, too, submitted feedback through the developer form and also emailed support, per ​@ScottWorld‘s recommendation. 

The reply I received echoes what others have reported here:

Our Engineering Team is aware of this behaviour and they’ve informed us that this is a known side effect of enabling keyboard accessibility for grid cells. In recent changes attempting to make Airtable work better for all users, we've introduced "edit mode" for select-type fields.

In edit mode, the tab key can be used to move between selecting items in a list, the control for adding additional items, and a control for expanding the current record. For multi-select, in edit mode, a user can also move between currently selected items and remove them.

Previously, several of these actions were totally inaccessible by keyboard, which made it impossible for users with certain disabilities to access these actions.

We don't have immediate plans to revert the change - the downside of pressing Escape to re-enter cell navigation mode has to be weighed against the upside of making more actions consistently available via keyboard.

We are discussing further tweaks to try to mitigate the downsides for our users. Rest assured that our product and engineering teams are aware of this functionality and they actively review customer input when evaluating improvements to the Airtable experience.

I am among the minority of graphic designers with the technical know-how to create 508 accessibility natively in InDesign files in order to export compliant PDF publications. As I expressed in my email exchanges with the (very kind) support person at AirTable, my goal when designing publications is always to create two parallel experiences – one for the sighted and one for the low or no vision – that serve both audiences’ needs without compromising the other. That should be the aim of AirTable’s interface update to serve our fellow AT users with vision impairments. 

Would definitely encourage anyone having this “sticky cell” problem to join in the chorus and ask AirTable to come up with a solution! The more they know it’s an impediment for many people, the more they’ll prioritize a fix. I’d be totally happy if the default interface is set for those with vision disabilities with a settings option to turn it off for those who don’t need it.  

I am low-sighted and I hate this change.