Prevent creation of blank records in a table

[Julian_Kirkness]

Would it be possible to make it impossible to create blank records in Airtable - it’s so easy to create these that bases become littered with them. It’s even worse if you accidentally add a record in a grouped view because linked record are created which are otherwise blank.

One way to do this would be to give the user the option of making one or more fields ‘required’ - and without them the record would not submit.

I find having to constantly delete such empty records quite annoying!

[Pierre-Louis_Fi]

Same frustration here ! Please do something…

[Michael_Furdyk]

Just want to add our name to this list - we are about to move a large system into Airtable and I can already see the autonumbering of blank records being a problem! Please add some way to disable creating records through the Grid View click, or ability to limit only certain users from creating records in a table. In the table we’re working with, we only want the API to create new records.

[Conan_Phelan]

Me too. In my case, empty records break the R package that I use to import data via the API.

[Russell_Bishop1]

Also - if you ‘Undo’ the action, you can’t see proof that you deleted it because you couldn’t see it in the first place. Usability nightmare!

[Pierre-Louis_Fi]

It seems that Grouping by a Computed Field prevents to add any new record.
An unpleasant solution could be to group all records on one unused computed field.

Downside : You cannot add new record from this Grid view anymore.

[Moe]

We created a tool that can help automate the process of deleting blank records. It doesn’t solve the autonumbering issue though.

[Andrew_Suh]

Oh man, I would love to be able to add friction/restrict row creation to overt intentful actions like clicking a button. It’s so easy to pollute the view and the UI spazzes out because it’s trying to sort against the multiple prioritization rules I have in place. +1-ing this like crazy!

[FLib]

I’m a new user but this is my current only issue

[Michael_Andrew]

+1 very frustrating feature. I would like the option to turn this off.

Similar request

Turn off creating row by clicking anywhere Product Suggestions

I agree that this would be a valuable feature to have. I like the ability to click into an empty row beneath our current data, BUT I don’t think that the empty row should actually turn into a new record until we actually start typing in some data.

[Y_Kerbens]

I think I find a hack to solve this issue which require the creation of one empty additional table that I call Locker and which contains on two attribute (locker and creation date). My locker table will not have any records.
Step 1: creating the Locker Table with the attributes (locker and creation date).
Step 2: Let say I have three primary tables namely TableA, TableB and TableC on my base. I link each of these tables with my Empty Locker table and choose my “locker” attribute as a lookup field
Step 3: TableA, TableB and TableC based on the newly created “locker” look up field (if you did previously have some groups, remote them first)
Step 4: Restore your previous grouping if there was any
Step 5: Hide the two newly added fields from TableA, TableB and TableC (cause these field won’t have any record)

Now the question is how to prevent creating empty records from the Locker table itself?
If you have a premium account you can just lock this view so no one can either add or delete any record. If you don’t have a premium account you can just group this table based on the “creation date” attribute