Question

Help with transferring Airtable attachments to Google Drive?

  • 6 January 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 660 views

I’m trying to use Zapier to link New/Modified Records in Airtable with Multiple Attachments to Upload the Attachment Files to Google Drive. This way, we can have all the file attachments we collected via an Airtable Form in one google drive folder.

I’m using the Loop functionality, but am having a hard time getting it to work.

 

I have this workflow:

1 New or Updated Record in Airtable » 2 Create Loop from Text in Looping » 3 Upload File in Google Drive.

 

In using Create Loop from Text, is the Values to Loop just the name of the Airtable Field of the Attachments, which in my case is just “Attachments”? Then its mapping is the “Attachments Url” from Airtable?

Then in the Google Drive Upload File, under File (required), I would choose the 2. Attachments URL of the Loop?

I’ve tried the above dozens of times, but I just cannot transfer the files in Google Drive.

 

Any help is appreciated.


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3 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hey there @soadg, welcome to the Community! 

I did some checking and Airtable sends the attachments over as line items. So I’d suggest setting the Looping by Zapier step to use the Create Loop from Line Items action instead. Then select the Attachments Url field for the Values to Loop in the Looping by Zapier step. On the Google Drive step, select the field, from the Looping by Zapier step, that contains the attachments (don’t select the Attachment Url field from the Airtable step). That should allow the Zap to loop through the line items and upload them to Google Drive.

One thing to note on this is that if you’re testing this out in your Zap, the Google Drive step would only upload the first item in the loop. When the Zap is switched on though it should run through all the files.

Hope that helps. Let us know if that does the trick! 😀

This post has been edited by a moderator to remove personal information. Please remember that this is a public forum and to remove any sensitive information prior to posting.

Thanks so much for your reply.

I just tried this about a dozen times, but keep getting the “This URL has expired” when testing in Zapier. 

Regardless, when running the Zap, I get message that “Create Loop From Line Items” was successful, and Google Drive “Upload File” was successful.

However, on the Google Drive folder, I just got abstract files with long names, probably the url. 

 

So I edited the Zap to include filename (of name of person submitting Airtable form) and the Airtable Record ID, and added the extension of JPG, and now yes, some of the files are passing through to Google Drive.

 

However, I’m getting only file per Airtable record, even if the record has multiple file attachments in the Attachment field. So the Zap doesn’t seem to be looping…. I also tried appending the Loop ID in the file name, but still no looping (as shown in attached screenshot).

 

Would you have any idea how to make sure the Zap loops to account for multiple files in the Airtable attachment field?

 

Just to make sure, I attach 2 screenshots showing the 2 steps of the Zap.

Thanks so so much for your help!

Userlevel 6
Badge +8

Hey soadg!

Looking at the values in the attachments list from Airtable, it looks like not all of them have a URL field. They all do have a File field, though. Do you want to try that instead?