Display shared Google Drive image links as buttons

[Damian1]

Hi everyone,

Since the storage for my attachments is limited, I've compressed the images and uploaded them on Airtable, and stored the high-quality ones on Google Drive. Now, I want to add URLs to shared Google Drive images so they can zoom in on the image (a function that Airtable is currently missing).

Because there're records that contain multiple attachments, they will have more than one URL. I can add multiple URLs in a long text field but they display as lengthy URLs and don't look nice. Is there any way to display it as multiple buttons?

Thanks in advance

[kuovonne · Accepted solution]

You cannot show multiple links in a single field as buttons. However, you can show each link as a pretty text link by turning on “rich text” in your long text field. Then use the “inset link” icon in the cell editor.

[Damian1]

Thanks. I forgot about that. I think that works for me. But is there any way I can do it fast?

[Irene_Pak1]

Responding late, but in case someone else has the same question, there is another workaround:

1. Set up a synced table with the Google Drive folder that contains all the image files. Each image file will be one record in this table.
   
   Sync settings: I usually set the primary field to be the filename, as this is both unique and easy to identify when selecting the record from another table (unlike the file path, which is unique but gives no clue what image it's attached to.
   
   Note: If your images live in many different folders, I suggest putting them in a master folder and syncing to that. Make sure your initial sync settings ignore subfolders so they are not imported as their own record.
   
   
2. If the thumbnails field that is auto-generated is not a high enough resolution of the image, add your own column in the synced table that contains your thumbnail of each image. Then hide or unsync the auto-generated thumbnail field.
   
   
3. Each record will also generate a button field that opens the source file.
   
   
4. Now in your original table, create a linked record field that connects to the synced table.
   
   
5. Set up lookup fields that brings over the thumbnail and the button fields
   
   
6. The buttons will not show up as buttons, but as a comma separated list of URLs. The URLs should appear in the same order as the linked records. You can't edit the URLs to my knowledge, so it may not be easy to identify the correct link if you link to a dozen images, for example. But it will save you a ton of time in cutting and pasting (and updating) URL links for each group of images/attachments.