I see in Airtable web clipper extension buttons to import and export configuration. Clicking on it it takes me to a page that doesn’t’ exist yet or no more. Is Airtable now short-stuffed to such an extent it’s not keeping up with their website?
I wasn’t expecting much…
Just wanted to find out if an Airtable genius figured out a way to give this Chrome extension an instruction to update the existing record. No, I know this is not possible using this extension, but I was still hoping.
What kind of things I can find on community forum? I search but I can’t find anything.
Is the instruction used in there just to decide what goes where in Airtable?
Or is it also to do some type of processing of the text, could I include there in the instruction something to format the text in a certain way?
There isn’t much here:
https://support.airtable.com/docs/using-the-web-clipper-browser-extension
And this is where I am supposed to find posts on the extension:
So if they are making people pay 20 dollars to continue using extensions they better keep the pages online.
I remember in 2020 Airtable announced this:
But nothing still.
I know there are other 3rd party scraping tools with extensions, but this is too much. Simple thing like a working Airtable clipper extension would be good enough if it was doing what it should.
I think one way to go around this would be to create a linked empty table and the records will be added using the Airtable web clipper and then an Automation would pair the main table with the linked table and make the “updates” show in the main table record.
I could live with that.
Unless there is something better… like a Chrome extension that allows to use the Airtable API.
Browserflow is an extension that has a HTTP Request command supporting GET, POST, PUT commands and body form JSON, Raw, Form and it looks like it may be a way of doing it, but there is an issue with that, more about this below…
Here is my scenario:
My table primary field contains words, e.g.
SNIGGER
GIGGLE
There is a image field where I attach an image representing the word. I could use different websites, but this is one I use as example site:
To search for SNIGGER, I attach word Snigger at the end:
https://www.reactiongifs.com/tag/snigger/
So this is how I generate the URL.
Now I would click on the URL.
Yes, Airtable, that’s how I feel about it!!! 
There could be multiple images there on the site. So I would use Airtable clipper to select a clip of the specific image, I don’t need to click the whole page.
The clip would be uploaded to Airtable.
What helps me in this case is the is the URL of the page contains the primary field of my main table record. Also the page title starts with “snigger”.
So here I can do a formula to generate the matching primary field in the linked table and then automation would match the linked record in the main table.
( I find the search in Airtable automations too slow).
Airtable clipper would work best.
This assumes of course the primary field in Main table and in the Linked table is unique. If it is not unique, there is going to be a problem. But I am not worried about it.
Browserlow extension for Chrome would need to be configured to attach a specific image e.g. first image only, or have a separate flow to indicate I want the 2nd image on the page instead of the 1st image.
Neither is a good solution and both options would likely require lots of patience and setup.
Here is a solution outlined in the Airtable community forum, which talks about 2 tables and automation, maybe it’s similar to what I am proposing, but I didn’t quite understand the suggested solution here.
By the way…
Did anybody realize, the Airtable Web clipper is a fabulous way to manually add a record. It’s pretty nuts I didn’t realize it in the past. I would have used the Airtable web form or even lately Keyboard Maestro Flow to enter data.
I only realized the Extension is a great way to manually type new records (just need to delete the text pre-populated there.
To do that, select fields to enter in the extension form and set for every field the Default Value to None for all fields you want to fill in the form.
The ready extension form:
That works even better than Keyboard Maestro:
