Combine attachments

[Alex_Lidell]

I am using airtable to keep track of medical records. I’ve uploaded several X-rays of the same bone, but they all came in as separate records. Is there a way of combining all the images in a single record now? drag and drop isn’t working, and copy paste just replaces the one whole image with another. I need multiple images to be attached to one record. Any ideas?

[drassi]

Yes, all the attachment fields support multiple uploads in the same field. You may need to click the plus button to the left of your existing attachment, to add a new one instead of replacing the old one. See screenshot:

[ScottWorld]

Yes, you can have multiple images within the same attachment field for a single record.

However, as far as I know, there is no current way to move attachments from one record to another, if your attachment field is already in the exact same table as your other fields (which it sounds like it is).

As far as I know, you would need to download the attachments to your hard drive and then re-upload them into the appropriate record.

For future reference, a possibly better long-term solution might be to create an entirely new “Images” table. Then, from your main table (I’m assuming it’s some sort of a “Patients” table?), you could link to multiple images in the Images table. Then, if you ever needed to move images from one patient to another, you could simply re-link the existing image to a different patient.

[Alex_Lidell]

Thank you! It sounds like there is no way of combining rather than re-uploading, right? <> is there another option if its in a different table?

[ScottWorld]

Right, it sounds like you’ll need to re-upload.

However, if you’re still early on in the building of your database (i.e. your table isn’t much more than individual images in individual records at this point), you could change this table to become your “images” table.

Then, create another table to become your “patients” table (I’m assuming “patients” here). Then, you can manually link from the “patients” table to the images table — by manually linking multiple image attachments to each patient record.

[Eric_Petersen]

A similar concept:

Create a new Lookup field that points to the attachments / photos in another table.

It is a good way to look at your photos / attachments aggregated.

If you do not have linked records, you could make them linked following this method:

[Linking every record of one table to a single record of another]

[Moe]

If you have attachments in different fields and you want to combine them all to be in one field, this tool allows you to do that directly in Airtable without having to download and upload any attachments.

miniExtensions

Merge Multiple Airtable Attachment Fields - miniExtensions

Instead of moving attachments around manually, just select which fields to grab files from and which field they need to be sent to. Also, you can automate it.

[ScottWorld]

Hi @Moe, Thanks! There also seems to be an additional need for an extension that does the OPPOSITE of this: taking multiple attachments from one record and extracting them into individual records in a linked table. There was a thread about this the other day that I tagged you in.

[Moe]

@ScottWorld I’ll see if that’s something we can build!

[Teresa_Tran]

Hello, has this question on creating an opposite app been solved? I have the same need:

I use Airtable on my mobile/iPad to take photos when processing products for my store, however, I am hitting the max storage usage due to these photo attachments. I want to continue to be able to take the original photos through a single attachment field in a single record. Meaning, multiple photos in one attachment field in one record per product.

I’ve restructured my one base into many bases so I can separate out a processing product base, product base, inventory base, and published base (syncs to my online shop).

When I’ve marked the processing record as complete I have an automation that is triggered to create a new inventory record in my Inventory base. This record is now linked to the original record in the processing record base, has already been linked to an existing or new record in the product table in the product base, and when it is triggered to publish from the Inventory base - it gets added to the Published base. Here, I need to simultaneously be uploading each of those attachments from the original product processing record as new records in the Published base’s Image table. This is the first time the images get touched, since I want to avoid linking them in the inventory/product bases for the aforementioned storage reasons.

• Is there a way to create this parsing of one attachment field with multiple attachments, into a new image record on a separate image table for each image, all still linked to the one processed product record I originally took the photos in?
• Note that I can use the image URL, but I’m lost as how to extract the attachment images URLs from, say, a lookup field on my inventory table for those attachments. It seems like parsing would still need to occur. I could do this in Zapier, but if I can in Airtable that would be preferred.

Thank you,
TT