Field order different between grid view and manage field

[Patrick_Matos]

Hello everyone,

I’m having some trouble with the field order.
As much as I move the field order in my grid view, when I click on manage fields, they appear in another order…
I wouldn’t mind but the problem is when I send automatic emails with list views of fields it does not display the fields in the order that I need to.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance

Patrick

[Elias_Gomez_Sai]

Is that Grid View your default view (first on the list)?

[ScottWorld]

Unfortunately, as far as I know, I don’t believe there is any way to control the order of the fields when sending those records in an automated email.

This is one of my pet peeves with Airtable, because I believe that this is a huge flaw. I would highly recommend that you please email support@airtable.com and request that they improve this behavior.

I bet that somebody could workaround this problem by writing their own JavaScript code, but I don’t know JavaScript, so the way that I personally solve this issue is that I send my automated emails with Make.com.

With Make.com, you can search for your Airtable records and then aggregate those records together with some of your own basic HTML code to create a grid with the fields in whatever order you want. And then you can send the email after aggregating the records together.

Here’s an example of what this scenario might look like:

[ScottWorld]

Oh wait, I think I just partially figured out how Airtable decides the field order for the email grid:

• Looking at your very first view in the left margin, if some of your fields are hidden, Airtable will arrange all of those hidden fields at the very end of your email grid based on the order that those hidden fields appear in the “Hidden fields” button in your toolbar. But it doesn’t seem like you can move those fields into the middle of your grid anywhere. Hidden fields seem to always show up at the end of the grid.

• If your fields are visible on your very first view in the left margin, it seems like the email grid will follow the placement order on that view.

I’m gonna play with this some more to see if I can figure out any more insights.

[ScottWorld]

@Patrick_Matos Okay, I think I just made a nice discovery here that should completely solve your problem, although it’s not as intuitive as I would like.

But this seems like the solution to both of our problems, which keeps us entirely in Airtable without needing to use any 3rd-party services.

It seems like if you perform a “Find Records” action based on a view (instead of a condition), and then you perform a “send email” action afterwards, you will get the field order based on the view in the “Find Records” action.

So, in essence, you can keep creating different views, make all your fields visible that you want to see in the email, arrange those fields on the view, and then find records based on that view, and then send the email.

This isn’t completely ideal, but it is a fantastic & easy workaround.

[Patrick_Matos]

Hello @ScottWorld
Oh my !! Thanks for this solution and really thanks for doing all this research, it works perfectly!!
Thanks again for your help!!

Patrick

[ScottWorld]

You’re welcome! Glad to help! :cowboy_hat_face: It’s not the most elegant solution in the world, but I’m glad there actually IS a solution at all! I’m also surprised that I never knew about this zany workaround until yesterday. Lol.

[Khuned_Sachdev]

Hi @ScottWorld, but is "Find Records" the same as "Conditions?"   I have always used Conditions and like your solution (as it's so unelegant to the have the emails send out grids in the wrong order), but wondering if Find Records will act differently to Condition?