Only Airtable IDs showing when transferring Data

Hello there, @Matteo Ottaviani. Welcome to the Community! 🎉

Hmm, from the look of those screenshots my guess is that it may potentially be a bug that you’re running into here. I’d recommend flagging this with our Support team so that they can take a closer look into what’s causing that strange behaviour and confirm whether it’s definitely a bug. You can get in touch with them here: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

In the meantime, it might be worth trying to set up the transfer again from within a different browser or private browsing window - just thinking that might help to resolve things if it’s some strange browser-related glitch. 

Please do keep us updated on how you get on with this, keen to ensure you’re all set! 🙂

Thank you @SamB, I tried to recreate the Zap using Chrome but I got the same result.
I reached out to Zapport and hopefully they will get back to me soon.
I appreciate you taking the time to suggest workarounds!

Cheers,
Matteo

You’re welcome @Matteo Ottaviani! I’m sorry to hear that it didn’t resolve it.

I’ve just checked on the Support ticket you’ve got open and can see that they’ve since responded with some suggestions. If you can’t see their reply yet, I’d recommend searching your spam/junk folder or searching your inbox for any emails from zapier.com in case it’s been misplaced. 

Hopefully they’ll be able to help get to the bottom of this soon! 🤞

Thanks so much for following up with that update here, @Matteo Ottaviani. It’s much appreciated! 🤗

Really pleased that you were able to workaround that issue by setting up a filtered view in Airtable directly. Hopefully that bug will get resolved soon but if there’s anything else we can help with in the meantime please do let us know.

Until then, happy Zapping! ⚡

Hello, I'm experiencing the same issue and have a question.

Does your solution mean, when transferring data, is it possible to select an attribute other than the Airtable ID? If so, could you please share a screenshot of your solution?

Thank you!

Hi @SINEORA 👋

As I understand it instead using the workaround of filtering the records by adding a filter to the Zap as Support suggested, they created a View directly in Airtable with the records filtered as needed. See Airtable’s Getting started with Airtable views > Using the view sidebar guide to learn how to create a View in Airtable. 

Then they would have selected that Airtable View in the Limit to View field in the Zap’s Airtable trigger:


This wouldn’t allow the missing fields to appear within the transfer setup but would ensure that the the transfer would allow only the records in the selected Airtable View to be transferred by the Zap. 

Hope that helps to clarify how to implement that workaround. If you run into any issues or have further questions just let us know!

Hello Sam,

I seem to be experience a similar issue where instead of the AirTable data, Zapier sometimes (not always) populates fields with the record ID instead of the actual data. In some Zaps for the data is pulled, while in other Zaps the ID is pulled for exactly the same fields. 

Could you please explain how to set up the filter in AirTable (as I understand is the workaround solution?) to enforce that the Zap pulls the data and not the ID?

Thank you.

Sorry to hear you’re running into this issue as well, @Sal_NL. I’ve added you to the bug report which will help to increase it’s priority. I can’t give any estimate as to when it will be solved by but we’ll be sure to notify you by email the minute it’s been resolved. 

Airtable’s community would be better able to advise on how to set up a filtered view within the Airtable app itself but I found this additional guide that may help to give a better idea on how to create a filtered view: Create custom views of your data

Hope that helps to get you pointed in the right direction. Do let me know if there’s anything else I can help with in the meantime. 🙂

Thank you, @SamB.

Let me just report back in this thread that I fixed my issue by using a simple workaround. I noticed Zapier has difficulty pulling the value from a linked record; sometimes it correctly pulls the value attribute and sometimes it pulls the record ID (for exactly the same field...).

Therefore, I created a formula field in AirTAble that just copies the linked record. Zapier correctly reads the values of formula fields since these are always read as text.

This trick at least now makes the Zap work, so I can move on now. But I have to say I find it an inefficient workaround, because it feels as if Zapier is not accommodating one of the key strengths of AirTable: The ability to link fields between tables.

I hope that Zapier will work on this and would consider providing in the future the feature to select whether to pull the value or the record ID of the selected record (in a similar manner as the AirTable automation feature).

Thank you for flagging this. Keep up the good work.

Yay! 🎉 Thanks for the letting us know @Sal_NL. I’m so glad you were able to implement a workaround - even if it’s inefficient! 

I noticed Zapier has difficulty pulling the value from a linked record; sometimes it correctly pulls the value attribute and sometimes it pulls the record ID (for exactly the same field...).

Ah yes, linked records fields don’t actually contain the data that’s shown in Airtable. Which is why we get IDs for those because the data being shown isn't actually in those cells. I’d recommend submitting a feature request to our Support team to get linked records handled better in future. You can do that here: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

Seems like the workaround you implemented has helped to solve things for the moment but do reach out again if there’s anything else we can help with. In the meantime, happy Zapping! ⚡