Kuovonne's Guide to Airtable

Pages
- Kuovonne's Guide to Airtable
  Fields
  Overview of fields types
  Editable Field Types
  Computed Field Types
  Field Types by Formula Data Type
  Field Types in Scripting
  Specific field types
  Formula fields
  Demystifying Formulas (DareTable 2022)
  Rollup fields
  Select fields
  Attachment fields
  Uploading Attachments
  Attachment Size
  Attachment URLS
  Thumbnails
  Converting Field Types
  Naming fields
  Metadata fields
  Simple Metadata Fields
  Data Validation
  Additional Dependencies
  Original Record URL (Thumbprint) Field
  Column Divider Fields
  DareTable 2023 Presentation
  Field dependencies
  Formulas
  Formula Field Reference
  Writing Formulas
  Using AI to Write Formulas
  General tips for writing formulas
  Testing for Blank Values
  Drafting Formulas in Parts
  Function versus Operator
  Typing Special Characters
  Commenting Formulas
  Formulas to avoid
  Formatting Formulas
  Basic Rules
  Nested IF formulas
  SWITCH Formulas
  Operators
  Specific Formulas
  Ranges of Numbers Values
  Comma Separated List of Fields Values with Optional Fields
  Earliest / latest date across columns
  List Fields Values (one per line) with Optional Fields
  Rounding a date to the half year
  Url of Interface Page for a record
  Removing varying items from a list
  Data Type Conversion in Formulas
  Text to Numbers
  Numbers to Text
  Data type conversions with Dates
  Troubleshooting Formulas
  Formulas that won't save
  Hiding or showing #ERROR!
  Troubleshooting date/time/duration formulas
  Troubleshooting numeric formulas
  Troubleshooting formulas with lookups
  Troubleshooting text formulas
  Automations
  Triggering automations
  Triggering automations for typed values
  Triggering automations on existing records
  Sending Emails
  Ways to send emails
  Using links in emails
  Emailing Attachments
  Accessing updated record values
  Third party automations
  Managing automation runs
  Templates
  Templates for record values
  Templates using field values
  Controlling Access
  Sharing a base
  Access control considerations
  Techniques for limited access
  Airtable interface
  Share link access
  Synced table
  Prefilled forms + Automations
  3rd party portal
  3rd party webhook
  Preventing base duplication
  Specific Solutions
  Most recent form submission for ermail
  Email digest of a person’s records
  Sum of Multiple Select choices
  Link to multiple records based on select choices
  Dropping Lowest Score (top 4 of 5)
  Identify the position of a record in a linked record field (top 4 of 6)
  Sequential Numbering of Records
  Ending a list of rollup items with ", and"
  Table ID in a formula
  Latest/earliest date across several fields
  Associating People with Records
  First Tuesday of the Previous Month
  Miscellaneous
  Web API Calls for External Integrations
  Getting paid to work with Airtable
  Hiring a consultant
  Airtable Communities
  Making major changes to a base
  Suggestion for this guide

Kuovonne's Guide to Airtable

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Attachment Urls

Each attachment in Airtable has two types of urls that you can use when creating an integration or using an automation.

Expiring Attachment urls. These urls provide public access to the raw attachment, but after a few hours they expire. They can be used in third party integration that only need temporary access to the file. They can be sent in emails to provide temporary access to a file. These urls use the domain name airtableusercontent.com.

Viewer urls. These urls that require uses to be logged in with an account that had access to the base. They cannot be used in third party integrations. They can be emailed to users, but they will only work if the user has access to the base. These urls also do not provide direct access to the raw file. These urls follow the pattern https://airtable.com/baseId/tableId/recordId/fieldId/attachmentID

Legacy dl.airtable.com Urls

Originally each attachment had its own url. The url use the domain name dl.airtable.com. However, these urls had a security issue. The attachments were accessible at those urls, even after the attachment had been deleted. This meant that if anyone got access to an attachment url, they had access to your file and you could never revoke that access. The current system of expiring and viewer urls was designed to close this loophole.

However the old style attachment urls are still in formula fields for backwards compatibility, even though they are invalid. There are existing formulas in existing bases that rely on the existing format. These extract the still-valid filenames. If Airtable took out or changed the invalid url, all of those existing formula fields that relied on that format could break. Even changing the actual url could also potentially start a cascade of automations if there is an automation that watches a formula field. I doubt that there are many such automations, but it is less risky to not change the formula output.

If you have only the legacy dl.airtable.com url for an attachment and need to find the original file, I’m afraid that you are out of luck. Per a post by Airtable employee EvanHahn in this

thread⁠

on the Airtable community, the format of these urls have no information that can be used to track back to the original attachment. The full format of these urls is https://dl.airtable.com/.attachment/<long-hash-code>/<short-hash-code>/<filename.ext>. The two hash codes are randomly generated IDs that cannot be converted back to meaningful information.

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