Really. We need a form or an addition to the current form that allows for editing a current record as opposed to only being able to add a new record. I should be able to send a client a form that they can find their record in and update their data and not have it create a completely new record.
Please. I hate that I've had to resort to paying another company in order to do this.
Sadly, this feature isn’t natively built into Airtable yet.
However, there is a 100% free solution for accomplishing this — and it also happens to be the easiest way as well.
But first, to sum up the history of the problem, forms in Airtable always create new records, they never update existing records.
You have 2 free options for working around this limitation:
1. The hard/complicated/unreliable way which is not recommended: You can have your form feed into an additional table that acts as the repository for all of your form submissions, and then you can create an automation in Airtable that finds the original record in the original table and updates the original record with the data from the form. You would also need to prefill the form if you want users to see existing data, which can get quite complex and doesn’t support attachment fields. This also requires giving your users a brand new prefilled form link every time they want to update their form. You can see why most people don’t want to use this method.
2. However, the much quicker, much easier, much more elegant, much more customizable, and much more reliable & bulletproof way to have a form that updates existing Airtable records is to simply use Fillout's advanced forms for Airtable. You wouldn't even need to prefill the form because it automatically pulls in all the record data that you'd like to see on the form, including attachment fields.
Fillout for Airtable is 100% free, and it offers over 100 advanced form features that Airtable's native forms don't offer, such as updating Airtable records from a form, displaying formulas & lookup fields & rollup fields & attachments on forms, allowing dynamic linked record filters (i.e. dynamic dropdown selections), the ability to have multi-page forms with conditional paths, the ability to create new linked records on a form, the ability to accept payments on forms, visually displaying as many fields as you want to see in a linked record selection list (including attachment fields), limiting the number of linked records that can be chosen, and so much more.
If you are willing to make your client sign up for an Airtable account and log into that account, you can use an interface and send a link to that interface. If you don't want to pay for the client to have edit access, give read-only access and use a button in the interface that launches a prefilled form. Then have an automation that copies the info from the form to the original record, as Scott mentioned. That way you don't have to worry about the prefill link getting stale.
Also, regarding 3rd-party options: Fillout is almost like a portal, but if you want to get super-deep into portals, you can use an advanced portal like Noloco.
I just wanted to throw the miniExtensions hat in the ring! Our advanced Form can do much more than just edit existing records.
Wanna create linked records straight from the form? Sure.
Edit existing linked records? Why not!
Add a hand signature, make a payment using Stripe, prevent duplicates, validate data before submission, collect location data, break up the form into several pages, save progress and continue later, set an expiration date... we got it all and the list goes on! 😀
While our Form is not free, you can try out its features before subscribing to see if it'll fit your use case. Once you subscribe, you'll also get access to our whole range of automation workflows, which can save you from doing simple and complex, repetitive tasks manually and really boost productivity!
Let me know if you have any questions about this. I'll be here to answer them for you! 🙂
