Calendar View Print to PDF - Option to show entire primary field

[Susan_Lanier]

We currently create PDF production calendars for clients utilizing google docs. It would be great to use the calendar view to generate these, however, the print to PDF function is pretty useless as is because the calendar view cuts off the primary field if it doesn’t fit on one line. It’s fine when using online since you can click on each item to expand the record, but it would be nice to print these out directly from Airtable without having to export it to some other calendar software.

[Susan_Lanier]

For clarification this is what Airtable would print out from my calendar view. As you can see, it’s pretty useless.

[L_Team]

+1 for help with this!

Our team is also dealing with similar problems. The calendar can be created flawlessly EXCEPT when it comes to an easy to read PDF version of the same.

Our calendar view is filtered to display multiple dates from ONE record. Unfortunately that means that each calendar event begins with the name of the record and then cuts off the field name that is actually what we want to have displayed.

So we’re looking to either be able to display MORE of the event name in the calendar view OR to display the Field Name instead of the Primary Key for the Record.

Please see screenshots for clarification. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[Tim_Wilden]

Any news about this? I also want to print my calendar view (week), but given the native windows print dialogue, the options are pretty limited. Neither the page designer, nor the airtable print dialogue can be used for calendars, so I don’t really know why there are not any options for PDF export. CSV is completely useless, because it does not get exported in any resemblance to the original, not even in discernible grid.

If the excel export would work, this would not be a giant problem, but I cannot use the calendar for my business without being able to print it.

Even Kanban can print just fine, why not the calendar? Seems like a development oversight to me. Especially if people are paying good money for Airtable.

[ScottWorld]

Totally agree that this is a big issue with Airtable that I would love to see fixed. Airtable actually cuts off lots of text throughout many parts of the the system (expanded records that display linked record information, charts & tables, calendars, galleries, page designer block, etc.).

In the meantime, until Airtable addresses this, your workaround for printing calendars is to share an iCal subscription link from your calendar view, and then subscribe to that subscription link from another calendar program that has excellent printing options, such as BusyCal on Mac (or Google Calendar or whatever calendar app you prefer to use).

So basically, the workaround for this is to subscribe to your Airtable calendar from another calendar app, and then print from there.

[Ashley_Taylor]

Have there been any updates on this? Currently on a Pro Trial. And the biggest thing deterring me is that we can’t print a calendar PDF for clients…

[ScottWorld]

You can’t print calendars from Airtable (which is extremely unfortunate), but as I mentioned above, you can just print your calendar from a 3rd-party calendar client. That’s how everybody works around this limitation.

[Ashley_Taylor]

I attempted to do this by importing the calendar into Google, but the color coding I created via Airtable (by teams) didn’t carry over. Is there a workaround for this aspect?

[ScottWorld]

A few things:

Although you could “export your calendar” out of Airtable and then “import your calendar” into an external calendar client, that requires you to continually export/import your calendar whenever you make a change to your calendar.

The better option would be to use an external calendar client to “subscribe” to your Airtable calendar, so that whenever you make an update to your calendar in Airtable, the update will automatically appear in your external calendar client.

However, the Google calendar client only refreshes subscriptions every 24 hours or so, in which case you might want to use a calendar client that refreshes subscriptions every few minutes, such as BusyCal for Mac. Since you’re looking for the ability to print calendars, note that BusyCal has some of the very best calendar printing options that you can find!

I’ve heard that Outlook refreshes calendar subscriptions frequently as well.

Regarding your color question:

Color coding cannot be brought over from Airtable to external calendars.

The reason that the color coding doesn’t carry over is because whenever you’re looking at a calendar of events in Airtable, Airtable considers them all to be a part of the same “Calendar” (aka “Category”).

What you could do is create several different calendar views in Airtable — each one of them would show you just one “category” of event (based on whatever filter options that you choose for each view).

And then, simply subscribe to all of those different calendar views with your external calendar client.

Since you’ll be subscribing to multiple different calendars, each calendar will show up as separate “categories” (aka “calendars”) in your external calendar client. And then, you can color-code your different categories there.

This is another reason why subscribing would be the best option instead of exporting/importing, because once you setup all of your colors in your external calendar client, you won’t have to go through that setup process ever again.

Yes, it would be nice if Airtable just gave us the ability to print calendars, but these workarounds are incredibly easy & very effective — and they give you significantly more functionality & flexibility & customizability than the Airtable calendar view could ever give you.

[Ashley_Taylor]

This is probably the best response to a workflow question I have ever received. Thank you so much! Really, really helpful.

[ScottWorld]

Ha, that’s great to hear! Glad I could help! :slightly_smiling_face: