Prefilling a form

When making an Airtable form, you can use prefill_ parameters in the URL of the form to prefill specific fields. Note that this feature cannot be used to edit information that already exists in your base; only collaborators with editor permissions or above can edit existing records. 

Copy your form URL

Find the URL for the form you wish to prefill and copy the URL to your clipboard. 

Add URL parameters

Once you get the form URL, you can add parameters in the form URL to prefill fields. Knowing exactly what formatted text to use to properly encode the URL can be difficult, especially when special characters are being used in a field's title or a record's value. Check out this website to find the proper encoding for various symbols. At Airtable, we use UTF-8. Here are some common examples:

Prefixes

Start by adding a ? to the end of the URL.

Then, type prefill_ and the name of the field you wish to prefill. The part after prefill_ must exactly match the actual field name as it appears in the table, not the label used in the form. Note that spaces in the name of the field will need to be converted to %20 or to the plus sign (+).

Once you've typed in the field name, you can then type in an equals sign (=) and the information you wish to prefill. (If there are spaces in the information you wish to prefill, you will need to replace those spaces with %20 or plus signs (+).)

Prefilling a single select or multiple select field

If you are prefilling a multiple select field, you can add multiple values by including commas between the options you are selecting:

https://airtable.com/shr12345678?prefill_FIELD=Option1,Option2

Prefilling multiple fields

If you wish to prefill more fields, enter an ampersand (&) and then enter more prefill_ parameters.

Prefilling time

It's important to note that when prefilling time fields in a form you will need to use the ISO 8601 time format. Below is a breakdown of what each number in that format means:

Here's an example of what a URL would look like for prefilling time into a form. Notice that the number 10 has been added to the hour section of the ISO 8601 format. This means that the form will be prefilled to 10 am. 

Test your prefilled URL

The URL that you have created will prefill a form for you when accessing it. 

Prefilling linked records

You can prefill a linked record input on a form by appending prefill_FIELDNAME=THE_RECORD_ID to the form's URL.

If you are looking to prefill multiple linked records, then be sure that the record IDs are each separated by a comma and do not include any spaces. This is also an important consideration when you are using the values from a Rollup field to prefill the form URL values using formulas. In these cases, you'll need to add a formula function such as SUBSTITUTE() to remove the space like so:

SUBSTITUTE({Array field name},
     " ", 
   "")

For a walkthrough on how to prefill linked record inputs in a form, we recommend checking out this video demo. 

Hiding a prefilled field from the submitter’s view

Sometimes, you might prefill a field for a submitter that you do not want them to edit, such as an internal feature ID for a product feedback form or a support ticket number for a support survey.

You can hide a form field from a submitter by using the hide_FieldNameOrTitle=true encoded URL parameter. Similar to prefill_FieldNameOrTitle=value, the string FieldNameOrTitle should be properly encoded. For example, if your form field “Feature ID” should be prefilled with “Best feature” and hidden, your URL would look like this:

https://airtable.com/shr12345678?prefill_Feature%20ID=Best%20feature&hide_Feature%20ID=true

Let's break that formula down one more time:

When a field is prefilled and hidden via URL, the form field will not be shown to the user. However, the value will still be entered into the record when the form is submitted.

Using formulas to create a prefilled form URL

Let's face it, if you are needing to create many prefilled form URLs, then doing that manually for each unique instance that you might need one is error prone and can be quite tedious. However, by leveraging Airtable's formula field you can put some front-end effort into crafting a solution that will simplify prefilled URL creation in the future.

The first question to ask yourself is where the formula field should go. The answer is that it depends upon the way your base has already been set up. You could add it into an existing table, but that may not always be the best practice. For this example, we are going to create a new table that will act as a prefilled form URL "playground" so that you can experiment with different field values and minimize the possibility of affecting records in other tables. Here is an example base that you can copy. It's the end result of following along in the steps listed below.

SUBSTITUTE(
              CONCATENATE(
                "https://airtable.com/shrKySmaJbYOvdlfi?",
                "prefill_People=",People,
                   "&hide_People=true",
                "&prefill_Link+type=",{Link type},
                   "&hide_Link+type=true",
                "&prefill_File+type%28s%29=",{Multi select formula},
                   "&hide_File+type%28s%29=true",
                "&prefill_Status=",Status,
                   "&hide_Status=true",
                "&prefill_Deadline=",{Follow-up deadline},
                   "&hide_Deadline=true"
                         ),
            " ", "+")
            

Using an extension to create a prefilled form URL

One of our community extensions streamlines creating prefilled URLs.

FAQs

Can I create a hidden field on a form that isn't visible to the person filling out the form?

Yes, please see the Hiding a prefilled field from the submitter’s view for details. Additionally, automations with the "When a form is submitted" trigger can be used to add information to the record that is created when a specific form is submitted. 

Can I prefill special characters into form fields?

Yes, you will need to ensure any special characters are URL encoded. You can create a formula using the ENCODE_URL_COMPONENT(component_string) formula, as shown in this guide, or you can encode the special characters yourself using a site like this one. 

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