How can I make a form field read-only?

[Tim_Bourguignon]

Hi there,

I was wondering if and how I can make a (prefilled) field in a form read-only. I am basically creating a form to answer a question. The form should be generic, but the question should change. But it should not be changed by the user themselves.

I know the field wouldn’t “really” be read only since the user could modify the query string parameter, but that would be good in my usecase to prevent unwanted changes to one of the fields.

Thanks!

[Giles_Croft]

Sadly not! None of my hopes and dreams for Airtable to really grow into its true potential seem to materialise. Different priorities I guess, but still… :man_shrugging:t2:

[Alex_Edwards]

Thanks! I was thinking of adding an additional single line text field to have clients fill in this info on their own, then I can go through and take their free-form entry and select the appropriate option in my linked record field. It’s a bit of extra work, but my volume for this use case isn’t super high so it’s probably manageable. Just noting my idea in case that would be helpful to you!

[Amy_Groves]

Hi AirTable! I’m switching to Wordpress because this feature is missing.

[Justin_Barrett]

With all due respect, that makes no sense. Wordpress isn’t even the same type of application/tool as Airtable. And you’re dumping Airtable without even asking if there’s another way to achieve what you want, perhaps with the help of a third-party form tool like Jotform or On2Air: Forms . I just don’t get it.

[Amy_Groves]

Doesn’t matter whether WordPress is the same type of tool or not as long as it meets the project requirements. The topic of this thread is the lack of AirTable support for read-only fields. Not sure how adding a forms interface will address that since I already have plenty of write-enabled fields. What is good about AirTable is that I can present cell phone users with rows of an existing spreadsheet, and that they can fill in cells that are missing data. What is not good is that there is no way to prevent them from misclicking and accidentally overwriting data that’s already there. I remain open to suggestions.

[Justin_Barrett]

Amy_Groves:

The topic of this thread is the lack of AirTable support for read-only fields.

The topic is “How can I make a form field read-only?” (emphasis mine). It’s specifically talking about forms, which is why I recommended an alternate forms interface. On2Air: Forms can give you much greater control over a form interface, including displaying read-only data in a form, and using a form to edit an existing record, neither of which are possible with Airtable’s native forms. If you’re looking to present Airtable data to users, and want to control what data those users can/cannot edit, it’s worth a look.

[David_Krizan]

Adding on to this discussion of read-only fields, it would also be great to be able to use read-only Lookup fields in Forms. For example, in a feature survey using a Linked Record field to select (or pre-fill) a survey, it would be very useful to be able to display a read-only Attachment field via a Lookup field to show the user an image of the given feature.

I have found a few clunky workarounds to this in particular use cases (e.g., adding a “Verify you’re a human” checkbox to mark a certain status or kickoff a workflow, or using Zapier to parse, enrich, and route Form responses after the fact), but this makes things unnecessarily difficult. Instead, simply be able to select read-only fields and being able to provide default values (or Formula-generated values) for such would be utterly amazing.

[CristianCG]

Hi everyone!

At miniExtensions, we built a third-party form specifically designed to integrate with Airtable. Our form supports prefilling read-only fields and dynamically displaying lookup fields.

• To prefill read-only fields, simply turn on the Read-only and Allow URL Prefills toggles in the field settings.

• A field with those properties can be prefilled using the URL parameter, like in the example below: 

  • ?prefill_Readonly=Information%20for%20you 

Any lookup field you add will be populated depending on the selected linked record field: