Welcome to the community, @BrianM! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: Sorry that you didn’t get a response to your question. I do recall seeing it as I was going through a massive backlog of posts that I hadn’t yet read. Generally speaking, I’ll bypass a post when I don’t feel like I’m a good fit for the problem. I love Airtable, but I also realize that there are certain challenges I’m good at, and others that I’m not, and with the limited time available, I can’t respond to every thread, so I have to pick my battles.
One thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of users here are fellow Airtable users, like yourself. Only those with an “Airtable” label next to their username are actual staff. The rest of us are here answering questions purely because we love Airtable and want to help, but again, we have to fit this in around our individual lives, and we can only do so much. And frankly, of the total membership here (30,271 users at the time I’m writing this), there are maybe 20-30 of us (and that may be generous; I’m just estimating off the top of my head) who are the really vocal ones who reply to most of the posts. But again, we’re just fellow users, and there’s no system to who takes what questions. We help where we can, but we can’t do everything.
Those who have read my posts (especially some doozies from last year) know that I love a good challenge, and I know lots of others here who do as well. Frankly, I don’t feel like the statement above is a fair assessment of this group.
Again, I don’t feel this is a fair assessment, and there’s lots of evidence to back that up. Lots of us help on a regular basis with “small” requests of all types: basic formulas, simple base design questions, etc.
Absolutely not. If a particular problem is really massive, someone might ask about the possibility of taking on the job as part of their client work, but again, the vast majority of the support you see here is completely free. If, as you said above, you’ve seen some “great posts, with great suggestions,” then you should know this.
It’s impossible to know for certain why some posts get responses and others don’t, so pointing at numbers doesn’t really contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. I’ve written posts on two other community forums semi-recently, both with no response in about a month. Does it bug me? Absolutely, but looking at numbers won’t get me anywhere.
Like I said above, I’ve spent a lot of time recently going through posts that I’ve missed—literally hundreds of them—partly because I don’t like to see folks left hanging with unanswered questions. But as I also said, I know from lots of experience that I’m not the right person to answer certain questions, so there are some posts that I pass by. I do so with a sincere hope that someone who’s a good fit will pick it up and run with it, but that’s all that I can do.
To reiterate, I’m genuinely sorry that your post didn’t get a response. Looking at your question again now, I’m not sure that I can give a definitive “Yes, Airtable can do this” or “No, Airtable can’t do this” just yet. I’m not sure that I have a clear picture of your use case from what you’ve described so far. You also mentioned the need to print the results of your work. I’ve done very little printing from Airtable, so I didn’t feel like I could contribute much on that front. On top of that, you ended your initial post with a comment about how this would need to work with collaborators. All of the work I’ve done in Airtable so far has been as a solo user, and I don’t have a very solid grasp of Airtable’s collaboration features because I’ve never used them. Those are probably reasons I stayed silent after my initial read, and why I still don’t feel like I’m a good fit now.
Again, keep in mind that this is primarily a user community, not an official support resource. The Airtable staff are actually quite good at assisting with problems. Some of them chime in here, but you can also contact Airtable support directly for personal assistance.
