PRODUCT SUGGESTION FOR FORMS: Hidden fields & hidden prefill fields that actually submit

[ScottWorld]

2024 update:

Even though Airtable eventually added this feature, all of this is possible in a MUCH easier & much more customizable way with Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable are 100% free and offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to conditionally hide fields on a form, update Airtable records from a form, display Airtable lookup fields & Airtable rollup fields & Airtable attachments & formulas on forms, dynamically & conditionally filter linked record fields by any values that you would like, perform math or other live calculations on your forms, accept payments on forms, create multi-page forms with conditional paths, create new linked records on a form, display as many fields as you want to see in a linked record selection list (including attachments), connect a single form to dozens of external apps simultaneously, limit the number of linked records that can be chosen, set advanced field validations & limitations, upload an unlimited amount of attachments simultaneously, add CAPTCHAs to your form, add choice matrixes to your forms, direct integration with hundreds of apps like Calendly & Google Maps on your forms, and so much more. 

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Old post from 2020:

Not sure if this is a bug in Airtable or just a missing feature, but we really need this feature. Airtable needs the ability for us to have hidden fields on forms that will submit data upon form submission.

Currently, Airtable doesn’t accept the values from any hidden fields.

Here’s the situation:

My clients are currently having difficulties with Airtable forms, because prefilling fileds on forms (using the “?prefill_fieldname=” syntax) only works if the fields that you’re prefilling are actually visible upon submitting.

We’re trying to prefill hidden fields on the form that we’ve hidden using Airtable’s brand new conditional field feature for forms. So we’ve hidden a bunch of fields (using fake values that will always result in false). We’re forcing these fields to be hidden.

These hidden fields actually get their prefilled values filled in correctly!

How do we know this? Because if we type in the fake values to “show” these hidden fields again, the prefilled values are visible! The prefilled values are right there!

But — the only way to get these values to be added into our Airtable database upon form submission is to keep the field visible.

If the field is hidden, Airtable won’t submit the value into the base, which then defeats the purpose of having a hidden field to begin with.

Thanks!

[Augustin_Clouti]

I strongly agree with that request. Most of the times It makes no sense to prefill and let user mess with the prefill value.

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Not a native Airtable form but On2Air Forms by @openside can do this with JotForms.

A new, upgraded version of On2Air Forms is also in the works.

[Moe]

One of the features that we’ve added recently to our form builder is the ability to prefill hidden fields!

miniExtensions

Prefill Hidden Airtable Fields in miniExtensions Form

With miniExtensions form, you have to choice to allow prefilling any field including the hidden ones. It works by using the prefill_fieldName= parameter.

[ScottWorld]

Wow! This is awesome, @Moe! Thanks for creating this! :slightly_smiling_face:

[Casey_Martin]

100% agree. It’s the most glaring missing feature on Forms, and the one big thing that really stops it from being a viable non-anonymized collection tool for almost every customer-facing business. It’s just not feasible to prefill a company name on a form if the recipient can ‘x’ out their company and then look at a list of every single other customer I have.

[32Stories_team]

Won’t be able to use Airtable without this tbh. missing a trick.

[tom_bg]

The lack of this feature is a huge blocker. I’m sure it’s pretty simple to implement and the value of this is enormous.

[ScottWorld]

Everyone, please be sure to email support@airtable.com about this. I emailed them, and they didn’t understand why it was such a big deal to me. :man_shrugging:t2: :man_facepalming:t2: Perhaps they’ll understand if they receive more emails from different people with different needs for this feature.

[Charlie_Spokes]

Also emailed, this is a major blocker for me too. :crossed_fingers:

[David_Zisner1]

This is a must for us too!