Navigating Airtable

Once you've put together a collection of rich and interesting bases, each with many tables, views, and records, it becomes even more important to know how to navigate the Airtable interface efficiently. These tips can help save you some time when you need to get the relevant information ASAP.

Keyboard shortcuts

Airtable supports a number of different keyboard shortcuts, which can be found listed on this page. Some, like copy (Mac: ⌘C | Windows: ^C) and paste and Cmd/Ctrl+V), find (Cmd/Ctrl+F), or select all (Cmd/Ctrl+A) you probably know well—but there are a few lesser-known Airtable shortcuts that are crucial for becoming an Airtable master.

• Cmd/Ctrl+K brings up the quick base switcher.
• Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+K opens up the view menu in the current table of the current base.
• Hold Alt while using the mouse to drag a record’s handle and drop it anywhere to create a duplicate.

When you need a quick reminder of any Airtable shortcut, just type Cmd/Ctrl+/ to bring up an overview of keyboard shortcut you can use.

Navigating through expanded records

The expanded record view provides a more detailed and comprehensive view of an individual record in your tables, along with revision history and comments. Just as you can navigate through expanded cells via the keyboard, you can do the same with records and you have a couple of choices. Either click the ∧ button at the upper left-hand corner of the window or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+, to move up one record in the current order of your view. Conversely, the ∨ button or Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+. shortcut will navigate downward in the record order.

Navigating through expanded cells

When you want to expand a selected cell to view its complete contents, the keyboard shortcut Shift + Space will do the trick—but you can do even more. You can also scroll through expanded cells without opening and closing each one individually. Instead, use the ↑ and ↓ keys to navigate your way through each record’s expanded view of that field. You can also navigate through each expanded field in the same record using the ← and → keys.

View search bar

Once you’ve filled your base with all the information you need and create various views to organize it in uniquely useful ways, you may discover it sometimes takes a while to visually locate the view you need. You can solve that problem with one swift action: search.

Click the view selector and, instead of manually choosing one, start typing and the list will filter automatically. Just as you can with the quick base switcher, you can navigate your list of views with the ↑ and ↓ keys and press the ⏎ key to select the one you want. You can even call up the view search bar with a similar shortcut: Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+K.

Quick base switcher

The quick base switcher lets you switch from your current base to a different one without the need to return to your dashboard. Call it up with your keyboard using Cmd/Ctrl+K.

A “Jump to a base” will appear and the minute you start typing the name of one of your bases it will filter the complete list of bases across all of your workspaces.

You can navigate that list by scrolling with your mouse or trackpad and clicking on the one you want, navigate it with the ↑ and ↓ arrows on your keyboard, or just keep typing until only one base remains and press the ⏎ key to jump right to it.

Flagging records with record coloring

To help you identify records quickly, Airtable Pro accounts can color code any table’s records based on an existing single select field.

Select fields require the least amount of setup because they have set colors and you only need to specify which select field in your table will determine the color.

When you have only one select field that you can easily see when viewing your base, or you’ve created groups based on the select fields, this color coding method doesn’t provide as much benefit. However, when you wish to color code records based on a select field you have to scroll to or that you didn’t use to create your groups, single select fields make for a quick way to add additional visual context to your base.

Coloring based on conditions

When you want more control over the color-coding process, you can set filter-like rules to create specific conditions that determine which records receive which color (or none at all).

This works well in many situations, such as tracking the status of tasks when using a checkbox rather than a select field.

You can set more than one condition by clicking the “+ Add color” option, but keep in mind that each record can only display one color at a time. If a record matches your first condition as well as a condition that follows, it will only display the color of the first condition between its order number and primary field. If you’d like non-matching records to receive a color, too, you can click “+ Set fallback color” to choose a default that helps to provide a consistent overall appearance.

You can also set rules based on other types of information like due dates.

Date-based color codes have their own set of conditional rules available in calendar view as well.

To learn more about your record coloring options, check out this support article.