Printing from Airtable

[Ryan_Building]

Hi all,

Seeing lots of posts from 2021 and 2022 about an inability to print from Airtable. When I go to print either a record review interface, or from the page designer, the generated PDF is an absolute mess.

A lot of the posts say Airtable are working on it, so hoping that in the 2 or 3 years that progress has been made, or a work around solution has been found?

If not, is it fair to conclude that printing from Airtable requires an external app and to factor those costs in when assessing costs for Airtable?

Thank you,

Ryan

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hmm, perhaps you could consider using an automation to create a Google Doc as a free workaround?  If not, yeah, an external app would be needed, I think that's a fair conclusion especially when dealing with printing dynamic record lengths

[ScottWorld · Accepted solution]

@Ryan_Building 

You might have some very limited success with Airtable’s “Create Google Doc” automation action which has a little hack to turn the Google doc into a PDF file, but it is very limited in its functionality.

But in general, yes, the only way to effectively generate good-looking PDF files (and the only way to automate the creation of PDF files) is to use external 3rd-party apps,

Here are some of your best options:

1. One of the most popular PDF creation tools for Airtable is DocuMint. This is my personal favorite, too. It offers a native script or extension to integrate with Airtable, or you can automate it with Make’s DocuMint automatons.

2. Another very popular tool is Docs Automator, which integrates with Google Docs.

3.. Formstack Documents and PlumSail Documents are 2 examples of PDF apps that offer full Make support, so you can automate their integration with Airtable using Make.

4. 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 Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is how you would instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

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 

[Ryan_Building]

Thank you! I'm building this database as a proposal for our team to adopt, so have to put costs alongside the proposal.

I'll explore the google doc as @TheTimeSavingCo and @ScottWorld have suggested, and explore the other options beyond that if needed.

Thank you for the clarity!

(But I hope the PDF generation thing is on a to-do list at Airtable!)