Editing Existing Airtable Form Submission?

[Ronald_AngSiy]

I was just wondering if there was a way for an airtable form submission to be edit-able. It’s annoying how everytime a form is submitted it shows up as a new entry when someone perhaps wants to go back and revise an existing form entry. I know Google forms has this. Is there any way for Airtable to do this?

[Kamille_Parks]

No, unfortunately. Forms can only create new records in AirTable, you can’t edit existing records (form submissions) using a form.

I think in order to do this you would need an integration with either Zappier or Integromat and another wbeform service that pushes values into AirTable, instead of using an AirTable-made form. Its really inconvenient for users and I can only hope that feature will be added in the future.

[Zachariah_Kral]

Agreed - the ability to edit a single record using a form (using a record ID) would be extremely helpful.

[Moe]

We created a tool that allows you to use Airtable Form to edit existing records. It does so without leaving a trace of the form submissions. It all happens behind the scenes automatically.

[f0spec]

There is a way to do it with Make/Integromat/Zapier by creating an extra tab (where records will be auto deleted after processing) in addition to a prefilled link.

Step 1 - User fills the form (table must have a unique record ID using the autonumber field)
Step 2 - Shoot an automatic mail with a new, identical form layout on another table (with prefilled values) using a script (webhook)
Step 3 - When user wants to click on the link to edit the form, he changes the required fields (with a field having the unique ID, you can add a message to ask to avoid modifying it)
Step 4 - a new record is created on the Table '2'
Step 5 - When new record created on table 2, sync values with table 1 using the ID
Step 6 - Delete record on Table 2 automatically using make/integromat/zapier by searching for table's '1' unique ID on table 2(or every x days at 23.59 PM, easier but more risky) 

[ScottWorld]

2024 Update:

There is a 100% free solution for accomplishing this — and it also happens to be the easiest way as well.

But first, to sum up the history of the problem, forms in Airtable always create new records, they never update existing records.

You have 2 free options for working around this limitation:

1. The hard/complicated/unreliable way which I do not recommend: You can have your form feed into an additional table that acts as the repository for all of your form submissions, and then you can create an automation in Airtable that finds the original record in the original table and updates the original record with the data from the form. You would also need to prefill the form if you want users to see existing data, which can get quite complex and doesn’t support attachment fields. This also requires giving your users a brand new prefilled form link every time they want to update their form. You can see why most people don’t want to use this method.

2. However, the much quicker, much easier, much more elegant, much more customizable, and much more reliable & bulletproof way to have a form that updates existing Airtable records is to simply use Fillout's advanced forms for Airtable. You wouldn't even need to prefill the form because it automatically pulls in all the record data that you'd like to see on the form, including attachment fields.

Fillout for Airtable is 100% free, and it offers over 100 advanced form features that Airtable's native forms don't offer, such as updating Airtable records from a form, displaying formulas & lookup fields & rollup fields & attachments on forms, the ability to have multi-page forms with conditional paths, the ability to create new linked records on a form, the ability to accept payments on forms, visually displaying as many fields as you want to see in a linked record selection list (including attachment fields), limiting the number of linked records that can be chosen, and so much more.

Hope this helps!

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld