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‎Aug 13, 2023 12:16 PM
Hi there!
I have made a regular airtable automation to send an e-mail when certain conditions are met. I was wondering, is there a way to have a value (not a list of values) of a certain cell in a certain row as an e-mail subject?
To put it more directly, when status of an order (field order status) is "finished", an e-mail is sent where the name of the client (field client) from the same record is a part of the e-mail subject.
Any help is very much appreciated!
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‎Aug 14, 2023 05:22 AM - edited ‎Feb 11, 2025 04:21 PM
Yes, that’s what automations are designed to do. Just click on the blue plus sign and choose the field from the trigger step.
if you need more power & customizability from your email automations, that’s where you would turn to an external automation tool like Make's advanced automations & integrations.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
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‎Aug 14, 2023 05:34 AM
Yes, you can do this by using the Find block in the automation module, so that it triggers the automation only a single record:
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‎Aug 14, 2023 05:36 AM
No, that is unnecessary in what he is trying to do.
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‎Feb 11, 2025 02:44 PM
I'm not having success using a field value in the subject line. I have a free text field for the user to enter their subject. I can populate the subject field in the automation with that field, but when I generate a preview, I consistently get a message "The "Subject" input is empty."
I would like the user to be able to generate their own subject, not go in and populate it as a static text item in an automation.
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‎Feb 11, 2025 02:49 PM
You're only getting an error in the preview of the automation. That means that you haven't chosen a test record that has a subject typed in. You'll need to go back to your trigger and choose a test record that has a subject typed in. Then, you can test your action step.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
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‎Feb 11, 2025 04:08 PM
thanks, that did the trick!
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‎Feb 13, 2025 12:57 PM - edited ‎Feb 13, 2025 01:00 PM
I wanted to follow up- there is something funky here. I'll run a preview, it will look good, then click the button to trigger the automation and it will give the "no subject" error, even though the test record and the field have a subject in the subject line. If I run a test from the automation screen, I get it fine, but if we click the button, it fails iwth the no subject error. It's like it's getting wiped out somehow.
Screenshot above is me successfully receiving the email when clicking "Test automation."
Screenshot above shows subject.
Then when we try to run it from the interface, we get the "no subject" error again.
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‎Feb 13, 2025 01:16 PM
Your screenshot above shows Subject #3, but your screenshot from yesterday showed Subject #1. Are you sure that your automation is pointing to the proper field?
- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant
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‎Feb 13, 2025 03:02 PM
Yup, diff automations. Here's what I just did: 
Successful preview
 Successful test from automation screen
Failed run from interface
The subject magically disappearing has happened enough times that I'm fairly certain I'm not screwing it up, but could be, for sure!
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