How to Connect Airtable and Google Sheets: An All-In-One Guide

10 min readMay 19, 2022

Airtable and Google Sheets are two powerful tools for viewing, editing, storing, and sharing your company data. Airtable is a relational database with a spreadsheet-like feel. With Airtable, you can connect all your company information together, view it in a variety of ways, and update it quickly.

Google Sheets is an extensive spreadsheet tool that allows you to quickly create lists of data for any purpose — company budgets, inventory, sales projections, and expense reports. With powerful formulas and a well-known table layout, it’s why companies continue to use it in their daily processes.

While both tools are similar, many companies still rely on and continue to use Google Sheets concurrently with Airtable.

In this guide, we’ll show you how you can use Google Sheets and Airtable together.

Whether you want to sync your data automatically between the two tools, update a cell in Google Sheets after you change it in Airtable, edit your Google Sheets spreadsheet while you’re inside of Airtable, or add Sheets as a PDF, Excel, or CSV in your Airtable base, we’ll go through each of the ways you can use them together.

How to Connect Airtable and Google Sheets

Using Airtable Data in Google Sheets and Exporting to Google Sheets

Edit and View Google Sheets Inside Airtable

Using Airtable Page Designer

Save Airtable to a PDF and Add as an Attachment

Formulas, Calculations, and Functions in Airtable and Google Sheets

Backup Your Data from Airtable to Google Sheets

Final Thoughts

How to Connect Airtable and Google Sheets

There are several ways to can sync Airtable and Google Sheets.

Manually — If you only have a few data points that need to be updated occasionally, this is the best way. You can set a reminder on your calendar once a month to manually copy and paste the information from Airtable to Google Sheets.

Airtable Automations — With automations in Airtable, you can set up an automation to automatically add (append) a row to Google Sheets with your information. So, if you add a new row in your Airtable base, you can have an automation that will automatically create a new row in one of your spreadsheets. However, the automation options are limited. You cannot update, change, or search information in any other rows in your spreadsheet.

Zapier or Integromat — Zapier and Integromat are automation tools that let you send information between programs you use in your business. You can grab information from your Airtable bases and send it to Google Sheets.

On2Air — On2Air: Actions is an advanced Airtable automation and workflow tool allowing you to update, create, search, and delete multiple or single Airtable records at once. You can then automatically sync or search any row in any Google Sheets spreadsheet to be updated.

The Actions app also includes Functions — over 40 pre-made no-code task templates to use with your Airtable data. Functions are used to calculate financial equations, import data from URLs, set default values in your Airtable fields, create or update Google Sheets with your Airtable data, and much more.

Using Airtable Data in Google Sheets and Exporting to Google Sheets

With Google Functions in On2Air: Actions, you can create or copy a single Google Sheets file or multiple new Google Sheets files. You can have it populate with the data from your Airtable record and store the spreadsheet URL in your Airtable record.

Instead of manually creating a spreadsheet for every new client or project, you can automatically create a new spreadsheet containing all the details you need from the data in your Airtable record.

You can then save the spreadsheet to a current folder or even create a new folder in Google Drive. You can set up the Function to automatically export the new spreadsheet to an Attachments field in your Airtable base and add the URL of the file to a URL field.

You can choose to run the automations on a set schedule or you can run it based on a specific trigger, like when a checkbox is checked, or the data enters a specific view.

To create a Google Function, choose your Airtable connection, your base, and your table.

Then, you can choose when you want the spreadsheet to be created either through a Checkbox field, when a specific field is updated, when a particular date is selected, a custom formula, a Last Modified date field, or only on specific records.

Next, choose your Google Drive connection. Then decide whether you want to create a new blank spreadsheet, create a single spreadsheet with values from your Airtable base, or create multiple spreadsheets with values from your Airtable base.

You can even create multiple templates that can be used depending on specific values in your base. Example: If you have a select field called Status with values of New, In Progress, and Completed, you can have a Sheets template for each Status that contains different information or has a different layout.

Now, choose the Source file, AKA your template file, that contains your placeholders.

Next, choose a folder where you want to save the files and a URL field where you want to store the newly created spreadsheet URL. In Record Merge Output, click Always Merge Record to ensure the automation always creates a file with your data.

And now, your spreadsheets are automatically created with all the data from your Airtable base!

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Edit and View Google Sheets Inside Airtable

While automating data back and forth between Google Sheets and Airtable will continue to be a necessity for companies, being able to use both simultaneously is a common need. And many times, you want to be able to quickly reference your spreadsheet when you’re viewing your information in Airtable.

Airtable doesn’t have the ability to view Google Sheets inside your base. You’ll still need to open Airtable and open Google Drive to work with them side-by-side.

With On2Air: Amplify, you can edit and work directly in your Google Sheets spreadsheet inside Airtable. With Amplify, your actual spreadsheet is displayed inside your record. You don’t have to switch back and forth between programs. You just need to open Airtable and start making changes to your spreadsheet while inside an Airtable record.

With Amplify, you can add the URL of any Google Sheet you have access to and edit it in your base. Amplify brings the simplicity of Google Sheets and the relational database power of Airtable together.

For individuals or teams who are used to working in spreadsheets or want cell-based formulas, the On2Air: Amplify app in Airtable changes how your team and departments work together.

You no longer have to wonder what the Finance Department is updating in a shared spreadsheet while you’re reviewing monthly projections for the Sales Team. Simply add the Google Sheets URL to a URL field in your base and then open the Amplify app. Your spreadsheet is the same as it is in Google Drive.

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Using Airtable Page Designer

The Airtable Page Designer app is a great way to create 1-page reports, invoices, social media posts, and any sort of content with your Airtable data. You can create various sizes, add custom text or images, and use the values from your base.

To use Page Designer, first, add the Page Designer app to your base. Then, choose your Table and page size, then add each field you want to be displayed on your page. You can use any field, and you can add static text and static images.

While the Page Designer app fits many use-cases, you’re limited to what data can fit on one page. If you need more than a single page or need your page to automatically expand to include the data from your base, you’ll need to use a tool like the Google Sheets Function in On2Air: Actions. You can set up the Google Sheets Function to create a sheets file that fits your data.

Save Airtable to a PDF and Add as an Attachment

If you need to export a PDF file from your Airtable base, your best option is to use the Page Designer app. If your data can fit onto 1 page, then set up the Page Designer app.

Add the Page Designer app to your base and choose the fields from a table you want to see on the PDF. Next, click the Print option. You need to determine whether you want to print the current record or multiple records in a specific view. Choose your Image Quality, Paper size, Paper orientation, and Page margin, then click Print.

You’ll be taken to the Print options from your computer. This varies depending on your operating system. If you have Windows, your Destination option will be ‘Save as PDF.’ Once you’ve selected your PDF option, click Save. Choose where you want the file to be saved and name your file, then click Save.

If you need to add the file back as an attachment in your base or add the URL or the newly created file to your base, you can use the Google Sheet Function in On2Air.

You can set up the function to create your spreadsheet, export it as a PDF, Excel file, or CSV, and re-upload the newly merged file into an Attachments field in your base.

Create and set up a template with the Google Sheets Function once and let the function automate and do the work the rest of the time.

You’ll no longer have to create multiple new files and try to add everything back into Airtable, then Google Drive, and then update your team to let them know all the files are now ready. It’s already all in one place automatically using the Google Sheets Function.

If you choose to create a new spreadsheet file in your Google Drive, you can add the URL back to a specific field in your base. Once the URL is added to the base, you can view both the PDF file and the editable Google Sheets spreadsheet inside Airtable using On2Air Amplify.

Formulas, Calculations, and Functions in Airtable and Google Sheets

Both Google Sheets and Airtable provide a wide variety of formulas and functions to perform calculations on your data. You can calculate budgets, interest rates, rate of return, and perform math equations in Google Sheets. In Airtable, you can combine multiple fields, extract text and numbers, and format dates.

Some of the more common Airtable formulas and functions include:

Basic math functions such as add, subtract, multiply, and divide
Arrays such as ARRAYJOIN
Date functions such as DATETIME_DIFF
Logical Functions such as IF() and SWITCH()
Record Identification with RECORD_ID()

If you need some of the advanced functions offered in Google Sheets in your Airtable base, you can use the Functions option in On2Air: Actions to create the same calculations in Airtable. Functions are pre-made task templates you use to create equations and calculations inside Airtable instead of using Google Sheets.

The Financial Functions allow you to perform financial calculations, such as:

Present value of an investment (PV in Google Sheets)
Payments (PMT function in Google Sheets)
Principal Payment (PPMT in Google Sheets)
Internal rate of return for a series of cash flows (IRR in Google Sheets)
Interest payment (IPMT function in Google Sheets)
And more

With the Math Function, you can:

perform simple and complex math equations
convert a unit to another unit
perform statistical functions
format numbers

See a complete list of all Financial Functions and Math Functions available in On2Air.

Backup Your Data from Airtable to Google Docs

Creating a backup of your data ensures you have your data available immediately if you need to transfer to a new service or if something happens to a service you use.

You can backup your data stored in Airtable to Google Docs. You can do this by manually exporting your data to a CSV file using the Export option in Airtable. Export your bases regularly to ensure you always have a copy.

You can also use On2Air: Backups to automatically create backups of your data on a set schedule and send it to Google Drive. With this option, you know you’ll always have the most updated information from your Airtable bases backed up in Drive.

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Final Thoughts

Connecting Google Sheets and Airtable together helps teams and companies collaborate better and keep all the company data in one place. With On2Air apps, you connect your Google Sheet spreadsheets to any Airtable base to create, edit, and view your files all in one place.