Save the date! Join us on October 16 for our Product Ops launch event. Register here.
Apr 08, 2018 07:11 PM
Hi here’s a workflow I’ve been using for quickly exporting out an airtable base’s table into google spreadsheet.
There’s a number of reasons why you would want to do this:
One issue you’ll run across when copy pasting your base into google spreadsheets is the images won’t transfer over right away.
Here’s the solution:
For reference, I am using my doggo base that I used for my bulk image downloader example
Pasting this into google spreadsheets looks like so
For your images, there should only be one image in that column. If you are using multiple images in a column this won’t work
/http[s?]://.*(.png|.jpg|.JPG)/g
in #1.Data should look clean now
Your going to want to do two things to make the image play nicely.
Adjusting the row height looks like so. Click the first row, hold SHIFT, click last row, → resize rows. Enter new value
Use =IMAGE(B1,1)
to have the image resize into cell, and then drill down the image
You can go back and resize the row height as needed. Image should auto adjust. After that you can print off the file
If you want a quick way to export your airtable to googlespreadsheets, use the following approach.
/http[s?]://.*(.png|.jpg|.JPG|.jpeg)/g
, dump your data, extract matches, copy and paste results=IMAGE(B1,1)
in column C, filldown the restNow you can do whatever you want with data.
Print it off, let someone do data entry on it, do some one time analysis, use all the features in google spreadsheet, etc.
Take all the work done by the other person, check for quality, import it back into your airtable if needed.
Some nice features of google spreadsheets is seeing what the other person is clicking in real time. Also, now you have lots of disposable quick collaborative workspaces
Apr 10, 2018 12:24 PM
Use page notes chrome extension to save the regular expression. So you can access text notes on that specific page
Bookmark the tool page on chrome bookmarks
If you do this workflow often, you can cut out steps 9 to 11 with a premade formatted google spreadsheet.
I use http://txtformat.com/ often for many database/ airtable related tasks, its used to find/replace data in bulk. Useful if you need to format data in the google spreadsheet after. Sometimes referred to as an “ETL” extract transform load process.
https://www.browserling.com/tools/text-truncate is good to get the first few characters of data on cell. If you have long descriptions for items, but don’t want to see entire text printout
Googlespreadsheet workflow I outlined is best used if your working with someone outside your team. Say you outsource data-entry tasks on fiverr.com or something along those lines. Or perhaps someone to write product descriptions. You haven’t vetted how reliable they are yet. You send them hard copies of what data they need to enter.
You don’t expect to receive that data until 2+ weeks out all at the same time. Its not for incremental deliveries. Its for milestone deliveries.
You also need to do a random spotcheck to ensure data reliability. Google spreadsheet has ways of catching data with errors easily. For instance, conditional formatting for “duplicate entries”. You might also need to post-format data entered from that person as well. Perhaps they might have entered phone numbers with different formatting conventions such as 444-444-4444
and also with (444)444-4444
.
Because you do error checking this way, you ensure your airtable base is clean data. You also get access to airtable’s collaboration / errorchecking tools as well.
You can print out some nice pricing sheets with this workflow. If you need to send an updating pricing list to clients this is a great way to do so.
you can protect columns of data from being edited in google spreadsheets. So if you send data to someone for bulk data entry, you can be sure your primaryKeys (first column of data) are the same, when its sent back to you
If you add new rows of data in your airtable database after, the row numbers won’t match the spreadsheet you sent out. You can have a temporary googlesheet do vlookups as a solution
Sep 23, 2018 09:24 AM
had to use this again, realized one of the formatting strings was incorrect
for browserling https://www.browserling.com/tools/regex-extract-matches, I had this
/http[s?]://.*(.png|.jpg|.JPG)/g
when it should really be this:
/http[s?]://.*(.png|.jpg|.jpeg|.JPG)/g
Nov 04, 2019 11:41 AM
Is there a solution to export images so they are physical image files on a hard drive (with file names that match something in Airtable)? This would be VERY helpful and I have a need to use it today, so hoping someone may have found a solution. Thanks so much.
Jun 29, 2020 08:32 AM
@Vincent_Tang This was incredibly helpful! My only question: is there a reason why you don’t use Google Sheets REGEXEXTRACT
formula? I tried using the same regex you provided and it doesn’t work, but I wanted to know if there’s any way to use it within google sheets?
I only ask, because not all of my issues have images, and the tool you linked removes empty lines, so it would be helpful to do it right within the sheet.
Jul 05, 2020 01:34 PM
Yes, we built this solution.
Feb 06, 2021 05:05 AM
Vincent , Your solution is very useful and a big time saver . Now that Airtable has introduced 3 REGEX functions , do you think the extraction can be done inside Airtable by using the REGEX_EXTRACT(string, regex) function. I do not understand coding and it would be great if you can tell me if this can be done and how to do this .
Feb 06, 2021 05:16 AM
Vincent, I was able to figure it out, Thanks.
I just used REGEX_EXTRACT({Notes},“https?://.+[^)]”) .
With this I do not need to use browserling for downloading image files after renaming them.
Thanks a ton
Nov 09, 2023 04:31 PM
Exporting images is a little bit trickier these days because Airtable's attachment URLs expire after 2 hours of being accessed outside of Airtable, so I typically use Make's Airtable Automations to help my clients export their images out of Airtable and into other apps.
p.s. If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld