Importing CSV via Airtable form attachment field and have contents bulk uploaded into another table?

MaryHartberg · ‎May 28, 2022

Is it possible to do this?

I’d like have an Airtable form with an attachment field, requiring someone to submit a CSV file (with info already filled out).

The contents are then imported into an existing table with the contents mapped out accordingly?

I’d have them fill out the contents with a form, but sometimes entries could be as much as 20+ …

I checked MiniExtensions but didn’t find anything that would work for this use case.

Help is appreciated.

kuovonne · ‎May 28, 2022

Scripts like these need to be customized to the base and CSV files that they need to work with. I no longer offer custom scripting services, although that might change in the future.

You can post in the Hire a consultant section of this community.

See Solution in Thread

kuovonne · ‎May 28, 2022

Welcome to the Airtable community!

Yes, this is possible with scripting. You can run an automation script when the form is submitted. I have written scripts that do this. However, this is not a script for a beginner to write. Here are some reasons why:

The script will need to get and parse the CSV file. There are multiple flavors of CSV, and parsing particular versions can be very tricky, especially if there are field values that can contain commas, quotes, or multiple lines. Scripting does not allow the use of libraries, so you cannot use a library to parse the CSV.
There is usually a slight delay before an attachment is fully uploaded, the automation script may need a slight delay before it does a fresh read of the record to get the attachment url.
Obtaining attachment urls is going to change in November. Full details on how the changes impact scripting have not yet been released. Depending on the changes, you may need to update the script then.
You may need to do data type conversions from the text in the CSV to the field write format.

This may also be possible without scripting using 3rd party integration tools. Perhaps one of the experts in those tools will chime in.

MaryHartberg · ‎May 28, 2022

kuovonne:

Welcome to the Airtable community!

Yes, this is possible with scripting. You can run an automation script when the form is submitted. I have written scripts that do this. However, this is not a script for a beginner to write. Here are some reasons why:

The script will need to get and parse the CSV file. There are multiple flavors of CSV, and parsing particular versions can be very tricky, especially if there are field values that can contain commas, quotes, or multiple lines. Scripting does not allow the use of libraries, so you cannot use a library to parse the CSV.

There is usually a slight delay before an attachment is fully uploaded, the automation script may need a slight delay before it does a fresh read of the record to get the attachment url.

Obtaining attachment urls is going to change in November. Full details on how the changes impact scripting have not yet been released. Depending on the changes, you may need to update the script then.

You may need to do data type conversions from the text in the CSV to the field write format.

This may also be possible without scripting using 3rd party integration tools. Perhaps one of the experts in those tools will chime in.

Do you have a script you sell?

kuovonne · ‎May 28, 2022

Scripts like these need to be customized to the base and CSV files that they need to work with. I no longer offer custom scripting services, although that might change in the future.

You can post in the Hire a consultant section of this community.

ScottWorld · ‎May 30, 2022

Yes, @MaryHartberg, for a no-code way of doing this, you could use an automation tool like Make’s CSV Parser tool:

You may also want to consider other ways of collecting the data. For example, JotForm offers a built-in spreadsheet widget that enables people to enter rows of data (up to a maximum number of rows that is prespecified). Then, that data can be sent to Airtable afterwards — either directly to Airtable or by using an automation tool like Make.com.

@MaryHartberg 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: