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Mass import of inventory items

B
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Hi all, 

New to Airtable and trying to find a way to do the following:

  • We have an existing base with all projects as a furniture staging company. These projects are based on addresses
  • Each project has inventory associated with it in a separate Excel doc at the moment
  • We want to now add the inventory associated with each project in Airtable without having to manually add each item one by one to each project
  • The excel would have the project title + associated inventory in individual rows. 
  • Is there an easy way for the import to recognize the project title (address) and then easily "assign" the inventory name and QTY to that project title? 

 

2 replies

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8853 replies
  • January 3, 2025

Sure, that would be very easy.

In Airtable, you would need 2 tables: Your "Projects" table and your "inventory" table.

The most important thing is that you will need to make sure that your very first column in your "Projects" table (i.e. your primary field) is the "Project Title".

Then, in your "Inventory" table, you will need to create a linked record field that links to your Projects table.

After that, take your Excel file and export it to a CSV file.

Then, use Airtable's CSV Import extension to import your CSV file into your "Inventory" table, and make sure that you map the "Project Title" field to the linked record field that you created above.

Since you're new to Airtable, you can learn more about linked record fields & importing records in my free Airtable training course, which you can take for free by signing up for a free 30-day trial with LinkedIn Learning. However, note that my course was created all the way back in 2020, so even though it is relatively outdated, the core underlying concepts about importing data & linking records remain the same.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Mike_AutomaticN
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Hey @bstew87!

@ScottWorld's solution will for sure work. However, you might also want to try out the following approach, which might be leaner:

1. Make sure each individual Inventory Line row on google sheets has a specific field referencing the Project (address).
2. Make sure Project Names (addresses) under such column are normalized (meaning that same projects will be always spelled exactly the same for example).
3. Create two tables in Airtable: (i) Projects; (ii) Inventory
4. Make sure the Primary Filed (left field) for the Projects table is of type "Single Line Text".
5. Create all corresponding fields for Inventory.
6. Create a linked record field, linking both tables together.
7. Select all cells from your Excel
8. Open your Inventory table in Airtable, select the top left "cell" and paste all values (make sure that fields are in the correct order and that "Project" field is pasted in the Project linked record field.
9. The above will automatically create all corresponding records for Projects (only one record per Project), and these will be automatically linked to the Inventory lines.

Please let me know if this was helpful, and feel free to schedule a brief call if needed using this link.

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

TheTimeSavingCo
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    TheTimeSavingCo

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