New Feature Alert: Introducing CSV Import in Interfaces

[Akshar_Patel]

Hello Airtable Community!

My name is Akshar Patel (AP) and I am a Delivery Consultant here at Airtable. We are thrilled to announce a powerful new feature that will revolutionize the way you manage and import data into your Airtable bases: CSV Import in Interfaces.

What is CSV Import in Interfaces?

With this new feature, end users can seamlessly upload CSV files directly through the interface, making it easier than ever to add data to your Airtable base. Say goodbye to manual data entry and hello to efficiency!

We’ve heard from customers that supporting the ability to import CSVs in Interfaces can help unlock use cases like data entry for marketing teams, inventory management, and project planning. Interfaces can be a great fit for teams where not everyone needs access to the full underlying data, and with this launch, teams can still add in a lot of data without having to give data access to everyone.

Key Configuration Options:

• Field Customization: Builders can choose which fields to enable for import.
• Select Options: Builders have the flexibility to allow the creation of new select options.
• Filter Integration: End users can only import rows from the CSV that meet the configured filters on the page.

Important Notes:

• Linked Record Fields: Writing to Linked Record fields is not currently supported.
• Updating Existing Records: The feature does not support updating existing records at this time.
• File Size Limit: CSV files up to 5MB are supported.
• Availability: This feature will be accessible on Business and Enterprise plans.

We can't wait for you to explore this exciting new addition to Airtable. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements as we continue to refine and improve your user experience.

As always, your feedback is invaluable to us. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions or suggestions. 

Thank you for being a part of our community!

[ScottWorld]

A great new feature! Thank you! 😃

However, this feature is still lacking some critical things. My top wishes for this feature are:

1. CSV importing should be available on Team plans. Currently, it is only available on Business Plans and up.
2. We should be able to import data into linked record fields.
3. We should be able to merge duplicate records upon importing (i.e. update existing records), instead of just always importing new records.

All 3 of these features are available with the CSV Import Extension, but Airtable doesn't allow extensions to be installed into Interfaces.

In the meantime, for anybody who is looking to add these 3 importing features into their interfaces, this is possible by using Make's CSV automations and Make's Airtable integrations.

With Make, you can do all 3 things:
1. Import on a Teams plan.
2. Import into Linked Record Fields.
3. Update existing records upon importing.

I demonstrate how do all 3 of these things — including how to automatically import and/or merge data into your Airtable bases — on this Airtable podcast episode.

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

[DisraeliGears01]

Would be a cool feature, but very disappointing it's only available on business and enterprise. Not for me I suppose.

[Karlstens]

This is disappointing that this CSV Import tool is not available for Teams - especially since in the old Airtable Professional plan I could synchronization my CSV files via the integration that was taken away from the downgraded Teams plan.

Edit: Looking at the feature roadmap, this feature is stated to be available to everyone? Could you please clarify @Akshar_Patel ?

Edit 2:
I find the button to test it out, but it's not working in Teams plan. 😞

[Dominic]

Thanks for adding this useful feature. Can I suggest some potential improvements?
1. The option to ignore the first row (header row) is remembered between sessions.
2. Mappings are remembered between sessions. Essentially, each interface page could have something like an import 'profile' that is remembered, making routine data imports easy and more robust.
3. Rows with a matching reference field can be merged so existing data is not reimported. This critical feature is available in the CSV Import extension but not here. The reference to this above "Updating Existing Records" does give me hope that there are plans to add this.

[ScottWorld]

@Akshar_Patel 

Hi Akshar,

Even though Airtable decided that Team Plans shouldn't have access to this importing feature, it shouldn’t crash Airtable when people on Team Plans try to enable it.

I created a Loom video for you here to show what happens when people on Team Plans try to enable this feature: https://www.loom.com/share/6c8b8513f6154737ba80f04edd3a1297?sid=3e15ad43-1812-4181-81f4-12714aa2729e

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

[Kai_Muscher]

Nice feature, yes. But is there a reason why it's not supporting updating of existing records? For example, we are using the CSV import extension a lot for importing PO lists to get new records as well as updating existing unique records.

K

[ScottWorld]

Great point. Updating existing records is another missing feature here. If you'd like to use 3rd-party tools to do this in your interfaces, you can get this functionality with Make. I demonstrate how to do this step-by-step in this Airtable podcast episode.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant