Updating A Record

[Rabbi_Yaacov_Se]

I am a bit confused. This might not be complicated. 

I have two ppl submitting a form and I want to be able merge some of the data. How would I do that? Can I use an automation to update one of the records? But then, how do I match the two entries so it knows what to merge?

[Rabbi_Yaacov_Se]

Or is there a way to have a script the merges all info in two fields when certain criteria is met?

[dilipborad]

Hello @Rabbi_Yaacov_Se 

To achieve this in Airtable couple of steps you need to follow

The first and most important thing is to define your criteria for merging records.

• Set automation when the form is submitted
• After the form is submitted Automation script is checked for that specific submitted data into the table based on criteria.
• If the criteria match(rows found) then the script will merge data in a specific row and remove another one.

Important Notes:

Automation Script has a limit of 30 seconds to execute all the code and process things so if the table has a large amount of rows to search and check. Sometimes it goes time-out without complete operations.

[ScottWorld]

@Rabbi_Yaacov_Se 

Any Airtable users that you pay for can update records — either through the data layer or the interface layer. 

However, it sounds like you want your users to update records through a form.

That is not natively possible with Airtable, so you have 2 different options here.

The 2nd option is, by far, the best option that most people in the Airtable community use:

1. If you stick with Airtable’s native forms (not recommended), you would have to create your own advanced automations to try to update & merge records after the form is submitted. That is very challenging and is prone to errors, and it typically requires scripting or using Make’s advanced Airtable automations..

2. Your best option: The much simpler & much better & much quicker way of doing this would be to simply use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

Fillout offers the ability to update existing Airtable records from a form, and it is 100% free to use.

Fillout also offers hundred of advanced features that you can’t get with Airtable’s forms, including the ability to update Airtable records from a form, display Airtable lookup fields & Airtable rollup fields & Airtable attachments & formulas on forms, conditionally & dynamically filter which linked records can be chosen, perform math or other live calculations on your forms, accept payments on forms, create multi-page forms with conditional paths, create new linked records on a form, display as many fields as you want to see in a linked record selection list (including attachment fields), connect a single form to dozens of external apps simultaneously, limit the number of linked records that can be chosen, upload an unlimited amount of attachments simultaneously, add CAPTCHAs to your form, add choice matrixes to your forms, integrate Google Maps onto your forms, and so much more.

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 

[Rabbi_Yaacov_Se]

Thanks. Based on your suggestion, I am using this! It is working. 

Apparently there is a way to do this within Airtable, but I didnt understand the instructions. 

https://support.airtable.com/docs/use-case-update-records-via-a-form

I got an error message when trying to add the formula. Not sure what I was doing wrong. 

[Rabbi_Yaacov_Se]

I like this! It is more elegant than what I did. But I don't know how to write the script.