Export Airtable file with colors?

[David_Blistein]

Can you export an Airtable file to FileMaker Pro and keep the colors intact? What about the pull-down menus? Thanks!

[Justin_Barrett]

The only export that can be done natively from Airtable is to a CSV file, which is just the bare-bones data in text form. No colors, single-/multiple-select options, formulas, etc. Even using the API won’t allow access (that I’m aware of, not having used the API myself) to those items, which also rules out using integration services like Zapier and Integromat to hack a custom export, as those services all use the API. There are some folks who have written custom export/backup tools that tie into Airtable, but again, I believe they’re limited by what the API allows. Sorry.

[Bill_French]

@David,

David_Blistein:

Can you export an Airtable file to FileMaker Pro and keep the colors intact?

I’ve developed API systems in Airtable and FileMaker and a few observations might be helpful.

• An API process pulling data from Airtable is unable to determine the color scheme applied at the field level; there is no data stored in the system that is also exposed to the API concerning rendering attributes. Indeed, I suspect Airtable simply interprets the color values based on a UI-level configuration table in the field schema.

• FileMaker also handles data in a similar way; like all well-designed platforms it separates data from design/rendering and any attempt to comingle the two is a bad idea. As such, even if you had colorization attributes in the export file from Airtable, FileMaker could not understand them.

Since both Airtable and Filemaker render color as a function of data, the configurations of both systems need to be set up the same. If true, exporting a CSV from Airtable and importing it into FileMaker should look and feel similar if – and only if – FileMaker has been configured to interpret the data into the colors expected.

[David_Blistein]

Thanks for your help…saved me a lot of fruitless experimenting. David