Sorry, you've exceeded the usage limits for this base Airtable - 500 fields maxed out - Sorry but I do think it's a flaw of design in Airtable

[itoldusoandso]

I maxed out 500 fields. It’s disappointing cause I didn’t know about it or I missed it wherever it’s mentioned. At least the Account overview should warn me earlier I am maxing out the number of fields. It doesn’t say anything about that. Now I have to spent days and days to redesign the table, maybe weeks…

I have lots of fields primarily because of many complex formulas I have. I rather do multiple steps with formulas so that it’s easier to fix them or update them, given how unhelpful the formula editor is in Airtable.

Now I will have to fold many of these fields together to free some space. I have alone 30 fields taken up with formula to generate separate URLs for attachments in the attachment fields (Yes I know there is an addon)… and so on.

If I sound a bit frustrated, yes I am. That’s SILLY this 500 fields limit. If it was 1000, fine. But I would have thought maybe 5000 or unlimited.

I have lots of formulas and dozens of automations… It will take me weeks to fix this.

This is an issue for Airtable database design.

I already have 15 linked tables also with 100’s of additional fields there. So it’s not like I am not taking advantage of additional tables.

From what I see, even if I upgrade to the highest Airtable plan, I can’t remove this limitation. It’s a design limitation.

This is bad bad… If I sound frustrated … YES I am :unamused:

Simple mention of database limitations would solve it. There’s place for this in the account overview. So if Airtable is quick pointing out the benefits of an upgrade to higher package, it should also point out the obvious limitations of records. If this was a time-sensitive thing the user putting together such a database would be screwed.

Now in this situation it doesn’t make it easy to redesign things, looking at this hairball it’s a major redesign. There is a thick line on the right of left long table and that is made out of 100’s formulas. That’s the problem.

Previously discussed here…

Adding a new field (column) error: You have exceeded the usage limits for this base Ask the community

I am trying to add the 501st field (column) to a table I use for planning work, and for more than one hour now I have been getting the message “An error has occurred: Sorry you have exceeded the usage limits for this base”. See screenshot I am on a pro plan and nowhere near my record limit. This is frustrating because it is impeding time sensitive work. Anyone have any idea how to solve this? Sometimes I succeed in adding a few columns, but when I refresh the page as instructed in the error …

[Dominik_Bosnjak]

itoldusoandso:

I did a bit of looking around and I didn’t know Microsoft and Google came out almost simultaneously out with an Airtable clone, the lists and table product. One could argue otherwise but Airtable was inspiration for sure.

I’m pretty sure at least one of them even outright admitted it, it’s not like there’s much point in claiming otherwise.

Generally speaking, ideas are a dime a dozen and even bad ones can lead to good things. Airtable’s idea, though? Credit where it’s due, it spawned one multi-billion business, several successful copycats, and even forced tech industry leaders into a mindless pursuit of clones.

[itoldusoandso]

Yes, you found the details and they are there once we know. But that information should be on the Account page. That’s what I am asking for. That’s where it belongs. Field limit is as important as row limit.

Just to give an example. I just finished putting together scraping of Amazon product pages using Web Clipper. It’s a primitive outcome to say it very gently but it works decently well and I am able to completely scrape the page into individual fields for product, image, sellers, weight, rating etc and other 20-30 fields … This whole process however requires 100 fields because Amazon pages are inconsistent and the contents end up being in many alternative cells I need to concatenate.

I could outsource it to build something in pyton but I am not a programmer and Amazon changes the pages frequently so I don’t want to depend on someone else if I can do it myself.

Airtable is perfect for what I need. Airtable is an enabler for the non-technical people to create amazing solutions. That’s what they build their success on.

So all I said is the information must be on the account pages for people like me to understand what the limits are because I am not an IT person, I had no idea I need to read the whole support pages or first ask in the forum… And this is not the first time somebody asked about it.

As you say, good design of any software is proper capacity management. That’s exactly what I mean, but I should have to read all support pages to know the constraints.

I apologize if I come across agitated, please don’t take it personally. I just hope Airtable team will add those pesky little details where they belong so that other people who maybe less experienced when it comes to databases don’t do the same mistakes as I did.

[itoldusoandso]

Also this:
Airtable seems to have a hard limit of 353 branches per formula

[kuovonne]

itoldusoandso:

a hard limit of 353 branches per formula

This is very interesting. Can you share how you discovered this? I assumed that the limit on formulas was based on character length, not number of branches.

I am also interested in your comment about “branches”. I normally do not think of formulas in terms of branches. Care to share more about your formula?

[itoldusoandso]

While I was searching if there is any limit to my already long formulas. I don’t want to bounce of the wall again.

Some references…

Max number of options for a multi select field Ask the community

Nah, no biggie: I had a table with 468 autonumbered entries (as well as 468 almost unique text fields as a double-check). I simply reconfigured each field from formula to single-select and paged through the new drop-down list to see if anything was missed. My first attempt was inconclusive, as the text field I chose was only nearly unique, and Airtable dutifully combined like values. I next tried it with the autonumbered field — and then sorted the select options alphabetically, as I’d forgott…

Editor for complicated formulas Formulas

Does anyone use an external tool for viewing/creating/editing complex formulas? Is there a tool that you like to copy and paste your complicated formulas into? Notepad++, Visual Studio? I know you would lose the linking to existing fields and the function lookup, but I’ve been struggling with some of my really long nested if’s. Thanks, Mike

Maximum formula length Formulas

Not really a bug, I guess… In an earlier post, I said something like I can’t imagine the formula you cite could come anywhere close to maxing out Airtable’s maximum formula length or even a maximum line length (if such a thing exists); I’m guessing the maximum formula size (counting EOLs) must be 32,768 characters, or thereabouts. Yes, I exceeded it, by +/- 11,400 characters. I think there are workarounds, and I’m certainly not going to squawk about Airtable “only” supporting formulas 2^15 …

[Dominik_Bosnjak]

@itoldusoandso I’ve been writing some technical documentation in Notion over the weekend and have just learned that their inline tables have no limits on the number of rows you can add to them. That made me remember this thread, so I’m circling back to drop a link in case this functionality solves your issue.

And before anyone asks, Notion is not exactly great at making databases accessible. Plus, their UI is completely unoptimized for this outlier of a use case. Based on the company’s stated mission (modular software is their goal, as opposed to Airtable’s accessible databases), that’s actually a feature, not a bug.

But if you need more than 500 rows to exist, don’t have to access them regularly and aren’t the one footing the electricity bill at the server farm powering whatever Rube Goldberg machinery you might have concocted, you’ll want to take Notion’s free, open-ended ride before paying for Airtable’s linear one.

Edit: plus, if you’re developing some sort of a pre-processing mechanism for a larger pipeline (a telltale sign is a database with more rows than records, especially if it’s like, way more.) the recent addition of an API to Notion finally means you can take your extensively processed data to Airtable and back via a simple webhook. Go, go, gadget API economy!

[kuovonne]

Dominik_Bosnjak:

But if you need more than 500 rows to exist

Just to be clear, are you referring to rows/records or columns/fields? Airtable has a hard limit of 500 columns/fields, not rows.

[Dominik_Bosnjak]

tl;dr: my bad, meant columns.

Any other typo and I’d say good eye, but you:

• spotted the inconsistency
• did not assume I was talking about columns/fields like most people would have done while glossing over the sentiment itself
• asked for clarification
• contextualized that ask

If you’re intrigued by the prospects of the media/publishing industry and hate things like money and things that cost money, know that you can land an editor’s gig in no time.

What I think happened here based on my browsing history:

I’m doing something super exciting that totally isn’t procrastinating with extra steps, who said that?

I step into this SERP:

Ok, a few surrounding results suggest there’s no limit, but just to be sure, that first one…

… also says unlimited columns/rows but the caveat is that this almost certainly isn’t scalable beyond a few hundred.

… unlimited rows, got it brain, thanks. You can refactor while I go spend the next 10 minutes detailing this discovery on the Internet.

[itoldusoandso]

Notion is a great product and I use it myself for what it works best - alternative to Evernote / Asana / Trelo … and ok…a bit of the Coda feeling if one is referring to the design.

Notion would require a great deal of external automation tools via Zapier and Integromat.

Plus the response your attached the screenshot tells it all “the UI is not optimized for this kind of setup”.

The beauty of Airtable is it is like real database made for kids. I never read any user manuals. I get sold on things that are done so well they are toddler safe.

Notion is also toddler safe but it’s just a different tool. I like both. Just for different things.