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I would like to have the ability to take an existing record in a table and apply all of its fields to a new record template. This would be an extremely useful feature, and honestly, I'm not quite sure why it isn't already possible.
This sounds like a useful feature for someone who needs to create a lot of templates with lots of fields to fill out. You are referring to this record template feature, right? There would be some details to work out, such as how to deal with linked records (if there should be templates to create new linked records or if the record should link to existing records).
I suspect that this has not yet been implemented because typically setting up a template is a one-time task, so that there hasn't been as much of a need.
@kuovonne I don't see why it wouldn't be able to automatically link records or even create new linked records from a template.
Here's the way I see it working:
Let's say I have a project in Airtable which is a record in the "Projects" table, and this project has recurring data that I will be using in a similar future project (which is why I would want it as a template). What I should be able to do is right click on that record and select something like, "Create template from record". This triggers a pop-up with all of the table's fields next to checkboxes. I go down and select which existing fields I would like to keep as part of that template (name, status, assignee, etc.), and bam, template created.
Now, let's say that there are onboarding tasks associated with that project that I want to repeat, but those tasks live in another table as linked records. In that case, that same pop-up asks me which of those tasks I would like to duplicate whenever the new Project is created. So in the future, if I use the project template, it automatically creates the same tasks that were in the original project.
Seems rather simple to me, at least in comparison to some of the other advanced automations that Airtable can do.
I agree that record templates can both link to existing records and create new linked records. I agree that your suggestion of a workflow for turning a record into a template sounds reasonable.
However, I have no say in what Airtable choose to do. I am just another Airtable user. In my post, I was trying to say that I like your idea, and give possible reasons why it might not be implemented yet.
+1 to this! My team has been using Airtable for years and we've got thousands of recordsโthere's several dozen I would love to use as a springboard for templates to make data entry from here on much easier.
This feels like a very important step. I started paying for airtable to use templates and was disappointed that they lack this intuitive feature. I would like to have a right click feature on an existing record that provides the option "create template from record" or something similarly intuitive.
Alternatively in the Template tool sidebar it could say, "create template from existing record?" and when clicked allows you to search and select from the existing records in the relevant table.
Please make this a thing, it would enhance this feature 20x because it is less common for people to build templates before creating their system. Typically a template is required after developing a system, so being able to easily transform an existing record into a template would be so ideal.
