Outputting data to a PDF

[TheHydra688]

Hi all,

So I have a table of client records. I have about 30 columns with various pieces of information in each. Some of them are drop-downs, checkboxes, some are single lines of text or numbers, etc. What I need to be able to do is to output information from certain columns into something like a PDF in order to create a "job sheet" for our surveyors, with only the information from certain columns that are relevant to their work. Is there a way to do this?

At the minute I have to scroll left to right, manually copy and pasting each cell into a Word document, which is incredibly time-consuming. Does anybody have a workaround for this?

Many thanks in advance.

[Mike_AutomaticN]

Hey @TheHydra688b!

Absolutely. One easy and simple way in which to create PDFs is using the Page Designer extension. Even if the use case is different (invoices), you’ll find this video super helpful. 

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

[TheTimeSavingCo]

If you're okay with a Google Doc try using the 'Create Doc' automation action: https://support.airtable.com/docs/document-automator-setup-guide

You can then do a Find Record action to grab all the relevant records and then insert it into your Google Doc as a list

--

If you need it to be a PDF and you're making <20 docs a month, I'd recommend trying out DocsAutomator.  Page Designer is nice, but doesn't really do dynamic data well (e.g. varying numbers of line items being displayed followed by a footer), not really sure if that's a problem for you though!

[ScottWorld]

@TheHydra688 

Unfortunately, Airtable's Page Designer extension can't handle multi-page forms properly, nor can it be automated in any way.

So you will be required to use 3rd-party tools for this, if you would like to automate the process of creating a PDF document.

Here are some of your best options:

1. One of the best & most popular PDF creation tools for Airtable is DocuMint. These guys are the OG of PDF document creation for Airtable.

2. Another popular tool is Docs Automator.

3. PlumSail Documents and Formstack Documents can also be used for this as well.

4. Although you can choose ANY document creation app that you would like, and automate the PDF creation process by using Make’s automations & integrations. You can even use good old fashioned Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.  If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

[typeflow]

As an alternative, you can use typeflow.us. it will help you to generate PDFs based on Airtable data. We use Google Docs as template.
We offer a lifetime plan currently at 150$. This plan lets you generate as many pdf as needed.