If they’re importing while using Airtable, they will always have the ability to toggle that option on or off.

If you want to make it foolproof where they wouldn’t have the ability to toggle that setting, you would need to turn to 3rd-party solutions for importing, like Make’s Airtable + CSV automations.

i show how to import CSV files into Airtable using Make on this Airtable podcast episode.

— ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

Darn it! Thank you!

Actually, I just realized that in your situation, using Make might not work because it will return an error message if you disable the option to add new select options (which Make calls “Smart Links”), and the user tries to upload a CSV file with new select options. So in other words, the user would be required to upload a CSV file that only contains existing select options. 

Thanks! We are trying to get our users to only use the options we are providing them. Currently, with them being able to add new options it is causing issues with the data.

Then actually Make would work for you, because it won’t allow any uploads of options that you haven’t already specified in Airtable! Just leave “smart links” turned off.