I’m finding that Airtable does so many things right, and I want to use it in my nonprofit for client/case/volunteer management, but I’m hesitant to throw all of our eggs in that basket without the ability to locally back up the data—at least once in awhile—including attachments. It would be very valuable to us to be able to download the snapshots, and then restore from them later, if needed. (Note: I’m assuming that snapshots include attachments…that would be key)
We’re working on improved export/snapshot functionality: You will be able to export a .zip containing (1) CSVs with data for all tables in your base, and (2) each attachment uploaded to your base.
In the meantime, you can jump through a few hoops to achieve the same thing by exporting each view to CSV, and then programmatically (or manually) downloading each attachment referenced in the CSV.
Part of the chore that we see has to do with maintaining the data types. If a new table is created from a CSV, all columns are imported as type Single line text. If you want to maintain all the work you did setting up formulas and display formats and a host of other data type issues, you need to do a copy/paste of all the data that you’ve stashed away in an export.
Upvote for this. Agree with Chris regarding dl of .zip files. I’m using a table to track expenses. Would be awesome for somebody with access to be able to dl all receipts at once. I realize I can compress the source folder and email it to collaborators/viewers separately, but the more done in the app the better…
Any further news on the development of this feature? I have a need to export a view with attachments, and it would be a lot of work to download each attachment after a CVS export. I’m not aware of another way to automate that process in Airtable. Is there?
