Getting started with Airtable views

The view sidebar helps to navigate all of the views in a table. You can open the sidebar features in two ways: mouse over the view icon to open it as a fly-out, or click the view icon to keep the sidebar pinned open.

To create a new view, start by opening up the view switcher and going down to the section labeled Create... then click on the option for the type of view you'd like to create. If your view creation section is collapsed, you will need to expand it.

With the view creation section open, you can hover over each of the view options for a brief explanation of that view type. Once you've picked a view type, clicking on that type will open up the menu to create your new view. You can now choose the view permission type and name your view then finish the process by clicking Create new view.

Below we created a new grid view for keeping track of all our current projects.

To learn more about creating views please see this support article.

Duplicating views can help you make small adjustments to other views that already exist without having to rebuild all of the filtering conditions, groups, hidden fields, etc.

In the example below, we want to create a new view that will only show our Tasks that have been completed. Just click on the dropdown menu next to a view in the sidebar and click Duplicate view.

You can also duplicate a view by clicking on the three-dot ... icon next to a view's name.

Paid plan workspace users can star, or favorite, their most frequently used views to add them to an easily accessible My favorites section at the top of the view sidebar. 

• Only you will be able to see the views you have added to your My favorites section. 
• You can star someone else's personal view. If you toggle off the option to Show everyone's personal views, that will not affect the visibility of the personal view in your My favorites section. 
• You can rearrange views within the "My favorites" section using the same drag-and-drop functionality used when reordering views. Hover your mouse over the view you'd like to move, then click and drag the reorder button to rearrange that view.
• There is no limit to the number of views you can favorite—so feel free to star away.

To delete a view, click the ... view menu and then select Delete view at the bottom of the dropdown menu that appears.

To reorder your views, click the dropdown arrow to the left of the view name. Then, hover over to the left-hand side of the view you wish to move. Click and drag on the reorder button (which resembles a stack of 2 3-dot lines) to its new location.

If your base has a lot of views, it may be helpful for you to use the view search bar. When you click on dropdown arrow for the view switcher, you can enter a search term where it says Find a view to find the view you're looking for. We will return both exact and fuzzy view matches for entered search terms.

The Create... section of the view sidebar is collapsible, freeing up screen real estate so you can easily access all of your views whenever you aren't actively creating new ones.

You can toggle the expansion of the view creation section by clicking on Create... in the view sidebar, as shown above.

Note that you will need to create at least one personal view (Pro/Enterprise plans only) for these broader view sections to appear. These view sections are an upper-level organizational structure that will automatically separate your essential views into two general categories: My views and All views. 

To learn more about the My views section, please see this support article.

The quickest way to edit a view name is to double-click on it, which will allow you to quickly edit its name. Alternatively, you can click on the the name of your view to expand the view options menu, and then select Rename view.

There are many things you can do to customize a view, such as:

• Show or hide fields
• (Re)arrange the order in which fields appear
• Adjust the row height
• Add filtering conditions
• Group records
• Apply sorts
• Apply record coloring to color-code your records (Available on Paid plans only)

If you've configured a view in a certain way—for example, by applying filtering conditions, sorts, and groups—you can take that view configuration from one view and apply it to another view. To copy a view configuration from another view: 

1. Click on the dropdown next to the name of the view you are looking at, then select the Copy another view's configuration option.
   
2. This will bring up a dialog box from which you can choose various configuration elements to copy over from another view.
3. Use the Choose a view dropdown to pick the target view from which you would like to copy configuration options.
4. Then, select the configuration options you'd like to copy over. 
5. When you are finished setting up the options click the blue Copy configuration button. This will apply the selected configuration options to the active view.
   

A few notes:

• The different view configuration options that can be copied vary depending on the view type. For example, since the Calendar view doesn't have grouped records, you can't copy groups to or from a calendar view.
• You can only copy view configurations from views within the same table.

You can export all of the records in a given grid view to CSV by opening up the view menu, clicking on the name of the view, then selecting the Download CSV menu option. This functionality is only available on our web and desktop applications.

You can use this export as a way to back up your data outside of Airtable and into another program (like Excel or Google Sheets). When you download the CSV file, it will be located in your device's default download location (more info on finding this is available here for Macs, and here for Windows)

By default, a grid view displays its records at a short row height, designed for maximum density of records. At the short row height, each record shows one line of text and small attachment thumbnails. If you'd like to be able to see more text and larger images for your records, then you can adjust your row height from the default short setting.

There are four different row height options:

• Short (the most dense option, and the default height for new views)
• Medium
• Tall
• Extra Tall (the most spacious option)

To change the row height in your current view, click the row height switcher in the view bar, then select the desired row height.

The shorter row heights allow you to see more records at once, whereas the larger row heights allow you to see more information per record. Specifically, larger row heights will show multiple lines of text in text fields, multiple lines of linked records, multiple lines of multiple select field options, multiple lines of collaborators in collaborator fields, and larger images.

If you're a paid plan user with creator permissions and you want to ensure that your preferred row height configuration on a view won't get accidentally changed, you can lock the view, which will prevent all collaborators from altering a view's configuration until it's been unlocked by someone with creator permissions.

Not exactly. Since views are meant to give insights into the same data, the same records will appear in multiple views. The records that appear in multiple views will only be accounted for once. The total record count for a base is determined by adding the number of records that are in each table together. An unfiltered view in a table will give you an accurate count of the number of records in that table. Workspace owners can navigate to the workspace settings page to monitor base-level usage.

No. Each individual view must be deleted one at a time as outlined in the section above.

The My favorites section will only appear when you have at least one view favorited.

You can think of each of your favorite views like a shortcut that links back to the original view. The original view will not be moved, or affected, by starring it.

We do not currently support exporting a full base. Each table in a base will need to be downloaded as its own CSV. Since CSV files are text only, attachment files will also need to be exported separately (more info on how attachments are included in the CSV export below).

All field values visible in the view will be included in the export. Information not included in the export are record-level comments, field descriptions, base guide content, and data stored solely in extensions (like Description extension).

Attachment fields will be included in the CSV file as a filename and URL. As of November 8th, 2022, attachment URLs obtained via the CSV export functionality will expire after a few hours. Read more about this behavior and why it's important for security here.

Yes, using the List views endpoint can return all of the views from a base including the view ID, view type, and name as well as a couple of other optional parameters. Learn more here.