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Need to copy result of currency formatted formula field into another field as a text value

Topic Labels: Automations Formulas
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Mouser-IB-Admin
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Because automations are so limited in formatting options for email messages, I'm stuck having to create a bunch of extra fields solely to copy specifically formatted other fields and change them to flat text so they'll appear correctly when emails are sent.

Because of this, I'm currently hung up trying to get currency to format properly. I have a formula field that outputs values as a currency into a field that we'll call "Dollar Total", including thousands and decimal separators. I was able to use a concat formula to get the basic copying done, including adding the $ manually at the start, but it doesn't handle decimals properly which then further complicates trying to get a formula to manually insert the thousands separator commas.

For instance, if a value is "$14,500.00" it'll output as "$14,500" but if it's $14,500.80" all I get is "14,500.8". It'll go out as far as I do with numbers after a decimal, but if it's only zeroes it drops them, and then that breaks the manual insertion of the commas based on number placement.

ChatGPT is normally really great at even the most complicated formulas, but it failed to even generate a formula that returned values most of the time, and the one time it did return a value it resulted in broken formatting like "$82763,.83" and "$10236,5.2" and that was with a crazy complex formula.

Any ideas? When I previously contacted support about this ridiculous extra effort needed just to get professional looking emails using already properly formatted values in Airtable, they said "good idea" and that was the gist of it. The answer more and more lately just seems to be "make another field" instead of "we'll fix the obvious issue".

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ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

In my personal opinion, I wouldn’t try using Airtable’s automations or formulas for this.

Personally, I would recommend automating your emails with Make’s advanced automations for Airtable, because they offer hundreds of functions that allow you to format anything (currency, numbers. dates, text, times, etc.) in almost any way you want.

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

For example, here is how you would instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

I also give live demonstrations of how to use Make in many of my Airtable podcast appearances here.

— ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

Sigh yeah, I hit this wall too.  There are a couple threads where people have tried to solve it, I'd recommend trying out each solution to see whether they work for you?

Here's one by @Alli_Alosa using a script step in an Airtable automation: https://community.airtable.com/t5/automations/currency-format-in-email/m-p/41210/highlight/true#M112...