Personal views is a premium feature (available on Pro and Enterprise plans) that allows collaborators with creator, editor, or commenter permissions to create views for which only the person who created the view can alter the view's configuration. (In other words, if you make a personal view, only you can customize its filters, field visibility, field order, sorts, row heights, record coloring, and so on.) Personal views are also hidden from other collaborators' view switchers by default.
It's useful to create personal views whenever you want to create a view relevant to your specific, personal workflows: for example, you could make a personal view with filters to only show the tasks for which you have been designated as the project lead. By making it a personal view, you can ensure that no other collaborators can accidentally alter your carefully crafted views.
(If you're looking for a way to stop all collaborators from changing the configuration of a view that the entire team uses, you might want to lock the view instead.)
Personal views are available for workspaces on Pro and Enterprise plans. For more information on Airtable's plans and pricing, see our pricing page.
If you are in a base in a workspace that is on a Pro or Enterprise plan, you can create personal views. To start, click on the view switcher and go to the view you would like to turn into a personal view (or create a new view and configure it to your specifications).
Next, click on the view mode button next to the name of the view. This will open up the view mode menu, which you can use to choose the view mode that you want for the currently selected view. By default, the view will be collaborative, meaning that all collaborators with editor permissions and above can edit the view's configuration; select the Personal option to make the view into a personal view. (You can also choose to lock a view from this menu—learn more about locked views here.)
By default, when you open up the view menu, you will only see collaborative views and your own personal views (which are marked with the personal view icon after the view name).
If you toggle the Show everyone's personal views option, then you'll see the personal views that everyone else has made. The user profile picture and name of the person who made the personal view will show next to all the views they've created.
If you select another person's personal view, you will be able to view it, but not configure or edit it in any way. (You can, however, duplicate that person's view to use their view configuration for a new collaborative view or for a personal view of your own.)
A few notes on personal views:
- You cannot make the only view in a table into a personal view. For every table, there must always be at least one collaborative grid view accessible to everyone in the workspace.
- If you choose to switch a non-personal view to a personal view, then it is worth pointing out that the "original" view will not remain after converting to a personal view. As a best practice tip, duplicate any views you wish to keep before converting them to a personal view.
- If you have commenter-level permissions to a base, a personal view is the only kind of view that you can make.