Convert "Long Text" to "Attachment" type

[Laetitia_PLAUT]

Hi,

I have changed the field type of some columns from “Attachment” to “Long text”. However, now I need to go back to the old format without losing the data. If I try to do so, the content of the columns is not converted and it is lost. So is there a way to convert columns from “Long Text” to “Attachment” type ?

Thank you for your help,

Damien ROCHE

[Bill_French]

Laetitia_PLAUT:

is there a way to convert columns from “Long Text” to “Attachment” type ?

Nope. Attachments are files - either text or binary (like images). You’d have to first convert your long text into a file for each record and then upload as an attachment.

[kuovonne · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

There is no direct method to do this. I would do it with scripting and a third party service. It would require having both the long text field and a different attachment field. The script sends the long text to a third party service to be turned into a file, then the script turns the file into an attachment. Once all the files are attached, you can then delete the original long text field.

How many records do you have to convert? If it is less than a few dozen, you may want to just do it by hand. If you have several hundreds to thousands of records, I recommend the scripting method. If it is somewhere in between, it depends on you endurance for tedious tasks, your tolerance for accidental mistakes, your budget, and how soon you need the task done.

[Laetitia_PLAUT]

Thank you for your quick answers !

I thought about the third party service, but I was hoping to avoid this. I have almost 600 records to update so the manual way is not a solution but I also work with Zapier and I will be able to make the transition by creating a temporary zaps.