Page Design is really useful but I can't do a seemingly simple thing.
I have a list (view of a table) and I want to layout it and print it in PDF with Page Designer but I can't find a way.
It seems you can only print a single record at a time.
Can you tell me if there is a way?
Thank you
Danilo
Solved
Print a list with Page Designer
+4Best answer by TheTimeSavingCo
Ah, try:
1. Create a new table called "For Page Designer" or something and create a linked field to your main table
2. Link all of the relevant records to a single record in "For Page Designer"
3. In Page Designer, use that one record in "For Page Designer" that's linked to all the relevant records, then use the linked field in your design and you'll end up with this:
And here's the data set up!
+33Unfortunately, that is not possible with Page Designer if you're looking for an actual document that produces a list of records with column headers, a header at the top of the page, a footer at the bottom of the page, etc.
You can sort of hack it by setting your "page size" to a very short height, and then when it comes time to print, you can set a normal "paper size". But what that's doing is repeating the exact same page for each record — and you're telling Airtable to squeeze all the individual pages onto a single piece of paper.
However, even if that hack works, it still can't be automated, and you still have to manually generate the PDF and then manually email the PDF or manually insert the PDF into Airtable (or whatever you'd like to do with the PDF).
In general, you will typically need to turn to an external document creation app if you would like to automatically create PDF files for list of records.
Here are a couple of options for you:
1. One of the most popular PDF creation tools for Airtable is DocuMint. This can be automated natively or by using Make’s DocuMint automations.
2. Another popular tool is Docs Automator, which integrates with Google Docs.
3. However, 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 Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Excel. If you've never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.
p.s. 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: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld
+28Ah, try:
1. Create a new table called "For Page Designer" or something and create a linked field to your main table
2. Link all of the relevant records to a single record in "For Page Designer"
3. In Page Designer, use that one record in "For Page Designer" that's linked to all the relevant records, then use the linked field in your design and you'll end up with this:
And here's the data set up!
+33One of the problems with that approach is that you would need to pre-set the linked record field to a maximum height on the document, meaning that there is a maximum number of linked records that can print.
Also, I'm not sure how elegantly Airtable would handle page breaks.
For example, what happens to text that falls across a page break?
Also, I'm assuming that Airtable wouldn't allow a bunch of empty lines at the end to create multiple blank pages at the end, but I'm not 100% sure about that.
+4TheTimeSavingCo wrote:
Ah, try:
1. Create a new table called "For Page Designer" or something and create a linked field to your main table
2. Link all of the relevant records to a single record in "For Page Designer"
3. In Page Designer, use that one record in "For Page Designer" that's linked to all the relevant records, then use the linked field in your design and you'll end up with this:
And here's the data set up!
Thank you.
I was afraid it was the only solution while staying inside Airtable
1 person likes this
+4ScottWorld wrote:
Unfortunately, that is not possible with Page Designer if you're looking for an actual document that produces a list of records with column headers, a header at the top of the page, a footer at the bottom of the page, etc.
You can sort of hack it by setting your "page size" to a very short height, and then when it comes time to print, you can set a normal "paper size". But what that's doing is repeating the exact same page for each record — and you're telling Airtable to squeeze all the individual pages onto a single piece of paper.
However, even if that hack works, it still can't be automated, and you still have to manually generate the PDF and then manually email the PDF or manually insert the PDF into Airtable (or whatever you'd like to do with the PDF).
In general, you will typically need to turn to an external document creation app if you would like to automatically create PDF files for list of records.
Here are a couple of options for you:
1. One of the most popular PDF creation tools for Airtable is DocuMint. This can be automated natively or by using Make’s DocuMint automations.
2. Another popular tool is Docs Automator, which integrates with Google Docs.
3. However, 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 Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Excel. If you've never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.
p.s. 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: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld
DocuMint can be a solution although I believe it is still necessary to prepare the data as TheTimeSavingCo recommends.
Thank you
+33No, you wouldn’t need to prepare the data in that way when using 3rd-party tools.
+4ScottWorld wrote:
No, you wouldn’t need to prepare the data in that way when using 3rd-party tools.
Great! ! Thank you very much
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