Hi Gareth, a vote of thanks from Johannesburg, South Africa. Really appreciate your videos and clear explanations. Here’s our use case for importing data without duplicates: we want to track our quote status in Airtable. To do so we export the list of current quotes from our quoting software and then import it into Airtable. Being able to do so without duplicates is a huge help and I can’t wait to try it tomorrow. Thanks!
Gareth - Your training and course is amazing. I thought this example might work but not quite what is needed. I am stuck on trying to find an App that will remove the OLDEST duplicate data fields after I upload new data without going through one by one. (I am adding to an airtable removals from Az and when the status changes to complete I want to remove the older data line that says pending.) I can figure out how to do it one by one or remove the newest line...but not the oldest. Any suggestions? Thank you so much!!
I'd explore the DEDUPE app in Airtable. It will identify record duplications based on the settings you provide. From there, you can choose which record to keep, in your case, the oldest one. If you want to do this automatically, I'd recommend having writing a script, or having one written for you. It can run in the background on a schedule, or constantly, and remove duplicates based on your criteria.
How would you import a field of attachments or images? It seems like a simple import of an excel spreadsheet with images does not transfer unless i am not matching the field name/format
Images and attachments can be copy/pasted from one Airtable to another, so this is my prefered method. That said, if your images live somewhere else, I don't know of a fast way to import the data. I think you need to bring in each image manually.
This was super helpful! Quick question...what do you do when you want to have multiple items in one field? For instance, I want to put in a directors info and their agents. But sometime they have more than one agent. This information is in the .csv but not sure how to import...do I have to manually add/ edit this information? Thanks!
This would come down to the structure of your database. If you have multiple tables, you can only import data to one table at a time. So, you may opt to do it manually if it's not a large amount of data. On the other hand, you may prefer to build multiple tables, link them accordingly, and then import data for each table, one at a time.
Hi Gareth, This is a helpful video. I am in a situation where I have monthly CSV records that I want to upload to AirTable without duplicates. My one further question is does AirTable have a way to recognize if specific fields have been updated? For example, if I already have last month's member data uploaded and I am going to upload the new month's, does AirTable have a way to recognize that someone who is already in my records from last month has, say, updated their email address? So I would want to remove the duplicate record but have the email field be updated. Thanks!
Yes, if you use the CSV import app, you can merge your import with existing data. For example, let's say the NAME never changes, in that case, use the NAME field as your 'match' and the import update the other data for matching names - i.e. update the email, phone number, etc where applicable.
Hey Gareth, great video as always. Does this apply to the entire table regardless of the view? I'd like to repopulate only a portion of my records, so I filtered out the ones that I want to keep untouched, and imported / updated the remaining part. I ran some tests but it still isn't clear. Thank you!
Hi Federico - yes this applies to the entire table and you can't filter out what gets merged. If you only want to populate a subsection of your data, I'd suggest a more manual approach!
Thanks for sharing this Gareth. I'm using webhook to send data from my website form to Airtable, but in some cases the same person fills that form for different purpose and it's creating multiple records in Airtable for that person. And I only want to keep one record per person and merge few fields of the new record and update in existing Airtable record. Is that possible?
Definitely possible - check out the new video we put out today that shows how to find a record if it already exists: th-cam.com/video/K6x1JNzArmg/w-d-xo.html
Hi Gareth, I receive a csv file each week, which I want to store / update on google sheets, what is the best way to automate this process? I have looked at building a zap, but since it is a massive csv file with 1000+ rows and 15+ columns, I wasn't able to build a zap for this. Thanks for your help!
Since the file is that large, I suspect that a manual upload into Airtable might be your best bet, currently. I'd look into using the Upload CSV App - your file may need to be split into multiple uploads given how big it is.
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Excellent, simple explanation. Whew. Thank you.
thank you for watching! 🙌
Hi Gareth, a vote of thanks from Johannesburg, South Africa. Really appreciate your videos and clear explanations. Here’s our use case for importing data without duplicates: we want to track our quote status in Airtable. To do so we export the list of current quotes from our quoting software and then import it into Airtable. Being able to do so without duplicates is a huge help and I can’t wait to try it tomorrow. Thanks!
So happy this helped, John!
Awesome detailed tips like the datetime format (European vs US) !!
Glad to help! 💪
Gareth - Your training and course is amazing. I thought this example might work but not quite what is needed. I am stuck on trying to find an App that will remove the OLDEST duplicate data fields after I upload new data without going through one by one. (I am adding to an airtable removals from Az and when the status changes to complete I want to remove the older data line that says pending.) I can figure out how to do it one by one or remove the newest line...but not the oldest. Any suggestions? Thank you so much!!
I'd explore the DEDUPE app in Airtable. It will identify record duplications based on the settings you provide. From there, you can choose which record to keep, in your case, the oldest one.
If you want to do this automatically, I'd recommend having writing a script, or having one written for you. It can run in the background on a schedule, or constantly, and remove duplicates based on your criteria.
How would you import a field of attachments or images? It seems like a simple import of an excel spreadsheet with images does not transfer unless i am not matching the field name/format
Images and attachments can be copy/pasted from one Airtable to another, so this is my prefered method. That said, if your images live somewhere else, I don't know of a fast way to import the data. I think you need to bring in each image manually.
also, we want to create the database and later add a new field to add to the end of every record in the database
can you trigger the csv import from a button and have the file upload in the background assuming you already have the mapping created once?
Once you've mapped this, it's quick, but you can't exactly set this to occur with a button push in Airtable
This was super helpful! Quick question...what do you do when you want to have multiple items in one field? For instance, I want to put in a directors info and their agents. But sometime they have more than one agent. This information is in the .csv but not sure how to import...do I have to manually add/ edit this information? Thanks!
This would come down to the structure of your database. If you have multiple tables, you can only import data to one table at a time. So, you may opt to do it manually if it's not a large amount of data. On the other hand, you may prefer to build multiple tables, link them accordingly, and then import data for each table, one at a time.
What's the difference between a block and an app??
No difference. Block was the original term, but Airtable rebranded this feature recently.
Hi Gareth, This is a helpful video. I am in a situation where I have monthly CSV records that I want to upload to AirTable without duplicates. My one further question is does AirTable have a way to recognize if specific fields have been updated? For example, if I already have last month's member data uploaded and I am going to upload the new month's, does AirTable have a way to recognize that someone who is already in my records from last month has, say, updated their email address? So I would want to remove the duplicate record but have the email field be updated. Thanks!
Yes, if you use the CSV import app, you can merge your import with existing data. For example, let's say the NAME never changes, in that case, use the NAME field as your 'match' and the import update the other data for matching names - i.e. update the email, phone number, etc where applicable.
Hey Gareth, great video as always. Does this apply to the entire table regardless of the view? I'd like to repopulate only a portion of my records, so I filtered out the ones that I want to keep untouched, and imported / updated the remaining part. I ran some tests but it still isn't clear. Thank you!
Hi Federico - yes this applies to the entire table and you can't filter out what gets merged. If you only want to populate a subsection of your data, I'd suggest a more manual approach!
Lovely, thank you very much!
Thanks for sharing this Gareth.
I'm using webhook to send data from my website form to Airtable, but in some cases the same person fills that form for different purpose and it's creating multiple records in Airtable for that person. And I only want to keep one record per person and merge few fields of the new record and update in existing Airtable record. Is that possible?
Definitely possible - check out the new video we put out today that shows how to find a record if it already exists: th-cam.com/video/K6x1JNzArmg/w-d-xo.html
Great info, as usual, Gareth. Quick question, what software do you use to edit your videos?
Thanks Mabo - I use Camtasia for editing!
Hi Gareth, I receive a csv file each week, which I want to store / update on google sheets, what is the best way to automate this process? I have looked at building a zap, but since it is a massive csv file with 1000+ rows and 15+ columns, I wasn't able to build a zap for this. Thanks for your help!
Since the file is that large, I suspect that a manual upload into Airtable might be your best bet, currently. I'd look into using the Upload CSV App - your file may need to be split into multiple uploads given how big it is.