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!

[Rebecca_Elam]

Put the parameters you would have put in the url in the automation.

[kuovonne]

Sometimes people want to use the same form with different hidden prefills, so an automation based on when the form is submitted will not work. People may also need all of their automation slots for different things, and not have enough automation slots available to fill in values for records created via forms.

There are third party systems that offer hidden prefills. However, this thread is a product suggestion about making this feature native to Airtable.

[Rebecca_Elam]

solved!!!

[Jordan_Scott1]

Thank you so much!!! :star_struck:

[Rebecca_Elam]

Thank you and your team! Many people will be very happy about this.

[cguckert]

I think this just got solved in the latest update, but it's behind a business plan paywall...

[JustinTracey]

Hi Scott, 

I totally agree with you and I'm experiencing the same problem 

I work for a charity for ex-offenders on parole and before the form they fill  in is submitted certain confidential information must be submitted to but there no way of keeping it hidden. I really don't want to create two forms.  Staff are already overworked with huge case loads- I'm trying to create work flows and risk assessments and evaluations that save them work- not make more work for them. 

[cguckert]

@JustinTracey just in case you’re not aware of this solution, Fillout was my work-around for Airtable not having this functionality.  Best of luck helping the charity, you’re doing good purposeful work.