Google Doc as Attachment

[Sal_Ohcin]

I linked my Google account with Airtable. When I click on attachment and select the google doc that I want to attach to a record, it does that.
However, if I change the google doc and later go to the airtable record, it doesn’t show the new changes. It just shows the version of the file that it was in at the time I initially attached it.
Is this how it is supposed to work?
Seems odd that it wouldn’t be pulling from the original document every time.
Would be nice if it was always synced.
Any suggestions?

[Justin_Barrett · Accepted solution]

Sal_Ohcin:

if I change the google doc and later go to the airtable record, it doesn’t show the new changes. It just shows the version of the file that it was in at the time I initially attached it.
Is this how it is supposed to work?

Yes. Attaching a file makes a copy of that file. It does not create a live link to the current version of that file (for online documents like Google docs). You could copy the URL to the document and save it into a URL field in Airtable, but if you want to have a visual version of the file in an attachment field, you’ll need to update it each time the document is updated.

This could be done with the help of integration tools like Zapier or Integromat. I do that with some documents related to a class that I teach. I use a lot of Google Slides slideshows in my live sessions, and my students have frequently asked for copies of those slides, so I made an Integromat scenario that exports the slideshows as PDF files to a Google Drive folder, and then attaches those PDFs in Airtable (where I’ve stored the document URLs so that Integromat knows which documents to export). My students have a link to a view where they can download the files. When I update a slideshow, I run the scenario to refresh all the documents.