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Aug 07, 2020 06:06 PM
I’m having a hard time understanding how I might convert these excel sheets to Airtable sheets. I have a series of months along the X-axis, a series of things to track on the Y-axis. It seems Airtable works on a per-record basis, so this Excel sheet would turn into a boatload of records, or am I missing something?
Aug 07, 2020 07:27 PM
At first glance I’d say you’d want to transpose your columns/rows. So everything on your y-axis will be your fields, and you’ll make a new record for each month.
The other rows you have at the bottom that summarize data would have to migrate to a Block, i.e. the Summary, Chart, Pivot Table, or Matrix blocks.
Aug 07, 2020 08:16 PM
Honestly i think i would just start from scratch and rebuild. Shouldn’t be too difficult with what is shown.
Aug 11, 2020 01:22 PM
Airtable provides structured fields with data types / rules that limit what you can enter in a single field / column.
Excel is unstructured so it’s possible to have completely different information in the same column. (e.g. your Budget YR column you have numbers, currency values, percentages, and text values as well – all in the same column.)
So the short answer is “no” you will not be able to recreate your spreadsheets as is in Airtable. BUT if you can rethink your spreadsheets to do it in a more structured way you will be able to enjoy the benefits of Airtable that Excel cannot provide.
Whether that effort is worth it or not is up to you.
If you decide to proceed switching to Airtable then the community is here to help when you get stuck. Feel free to DM me if you’re struggling a bit. I’m happy to help.