SnapShot Questions

[Howard_Cohen]

I could not find any existing threads regarding snapshots - my apologies if I missed them.

1. Besides Revision History, are there other data or metadata that is not preserved in a snapshot; e.g. forms?
2. Where is a manual snapshot stored? E.g. if I want a backup stored somewhere besides AirTable servers (redundancy, disaster recovery,…), is that possible?

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Hey Howard,

Welcome to the Airtable community!

1. Restoring a base from a snapshot will create a brand new base without affecting your existing base.

2. Airtable doesn’t give you a place to view manual snapshots. Here’s more info in the documentation.

If you want more control over your data backups, we have an extension (On2Air Backups) that automatically backs up your Airtable bases to external storage on a set schedule.

On2Air | Airtable Apps for Your Business Operations – 12 Feb 22

On2Air: Backups | On2Air

On2Air Backups is an automated backups app for your Airtable bases. Create scheduled backups of your critical business data stored in Airtable and export your information to Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive.

[Howard_Cohen]

Thanks for the quick reply. I had read the referenced documentation but it did not say if there is any other data/metadata not included in a snapshot. I had also looked earlier at On2Air, but as a nonprofit, the pricing would be more than what we are paying for airtable itself so that is not financially feasible in our case.

[kuovonne]

Howard_Cohen:

it did not say if there is any other data/metadata not included in a snapshot

Most information about the base is included in the snapshot, including tables, views, fields, record data, automations, extensions, interfaces, etc. Is there something in particular you are concerned about?

Snapshots are stored on Airtable servers. It isn’t possible to store an entire snapshot in any other location.

Note that when you restore from a snapshot, all internal IDs are changed (table IDs, field IDs, record IDs, form share urls, etc.) so any 3rd party resources that interact with your base may also need adjusting if you restore from a snapshot.

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Understood. We do have a Starter plan for lower budgets and a 50% nonprofit discount.

Feel free to reach out to us via chat on our website and we can help you out.

On2Air | Airtable Apps for Your Business Operations – 20 Jan 20

On2Air | Accomplish Anything with Airtable

On2Air is the All-In-One Toolkit to Run Your Business in Airtable. The collection of apps and integrations in On2Air will help you automate your business processes in Airtable, create advanced Airtable forms, create a backup of your bases, and much...

[Howard_Cohen]

I was curious if “forms” are include in the snapshot, but from your list below I expect that is the case.

[kuovonne]

Howard_Cohen:

I was curious if “forms” are include in the snapshot,

Yes, forms are included. Forms are a type of view.

Note however that if you restore a snapshot, the form in that new base will have a different share url. Thus, if you want to switch to the restored snapshot, you would need to publish the new url. Often snapshots are used to see old configurations or record data, and then people manually recreate them in the original base.