Snapshots inquiry

Nahla_Ibrahim · ‎Oct 30, 2022

What happens to record links, interface and syncs, if i restore a snapshot … how can i restore it back to the same base ? Will i copy and paste all records back into the main base ?

How come a free plan cant restore a snapshot but the creator can only do this ?

I also have not deleted records but found some missing when I was inserting new records and even though I’ve clicked undo until there were no more actions, I still could not find the recrods

kuovonne · ‎Oct 31, 2022

When you restore a base from a snapshot, you are creating a copy of the base. This has several implications.

You must have creator permissions in the workspace because only creators can create a new base.

The base and everything with an internal id inside the base gets new ids. Internal connections will (mostly) still work. Integrations with external services will not.

You can copy paste records between bases. You might have issues with having to copy linked records in a particular order.

When records are missing but not deleted, they are often hidden due to a view filter. Sometimes the missing records have been accidentally overwritten by an unexpected bulk copy/paste.

Nahla_Ibrahim · ‎Oct 31, 2022

Thank you Kuovonne for your reply.

I think that the missing records have been accidentally overwritten by an unexpected bulk copy/paste. But I don’t understand why this happened … it just doesn’t make sense to overwrite them since they were not related to the specific filter that was chosen, but then again the records are missing !

Do you have any suggestions of how you can resolve this overwriting issue without having to restore a snapshot and avoid going through the hassle of copy pasting back to the main base ?

ScottWorld · ‎Oct 31, 2022

You could check the base trash to see if any records were deleted in the last 7 days. If so, you could restore the records.

Otherwise, if the records are still there but were just overwritten with new data, you can look at each record individually to see its individual activity log. That might shed some light on how it was overwritten.

There is no easy way to get the old data back, but you could export the data from a snapshot to a CSV file and then re-import the data using the CSV import extension. You would need to match the data on a unique field (if you have one) to merge records instead of adding new records. If you don’t have a unique field, then the process would be much much harder.

p.s. If your company has a budget 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