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Link to attachment thumbnails?

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Richard_Foxwort
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

I have a lot of PDF file attachments in my records, and I would like to directly access and use the thumbnail images that Airtable generates for each PDF.

I can manually extract the thumbnail URL by right-click on an image preview image in my attachment field.

Is there an Airatble formula function that can expose these URLs so they can then be accessed by Zapier/Integromat or similar tools? - eg something analogous to what RECORD_ID() does to expose the record ID?

3 Replies 3

If you‘re simply trying to access the individual URLs via Integromat, then it’s much easier to do it in Integromat than in Airtable, because Airtable doesn’t offer any native iteration functions.

In Integromat, you can use their Iterator module to iterate through all the attachments in an attachment field, grab the URL link of each attachment, and then take an action on each one of the links individually.

(I am a professional Airtable consultant and a Registered Integromat Partner, and the Integromat link contains my personal referral code.)

You can also access the thumbnail urls from Scripting app.

However, keep in mind that Airtable does not support being used as a content delivery network for attachments per this topic.

Ah! thank you @kuovonne this is an important piece of information.

I have just completed an integration using Integromat (thanks @ScottWorld for the recommendation :grinning: ) where I grab the thumbnail URL which Integromat exposes and use it to display the thumbnail image in other parts of my service.

While this works very neatly for now, I guess now I should add an intermediary step where the thumbnail is copied to a location that I control so I can be confident the URLs will not get rewritten on me sometime in future.