Why does it take 20 minutes for Airtable to copy a table within the base

I need to duplicate a table in my base. The table has about 100 fields but only 2 records. The table is linked to 2 tables and there are about 10 fields being looked up from one of the linked tables. It has 2 extensions enabled and only 1 automation. Few formulas, no calculations, no files, mostly text, checkboxes.

Tried to copy today and my account was inaccessible for the next 12-15 minutes. At first Airtable was displaying the circle sign saying it is updating the base etc. Then after 10 minutes or so I get message “An error has occurred - refresh the page”. Tried to load Airtable on Android and iOS and same error, "An error has occurred … ". I tried to do that but nothing shows except the header and the menu strip with table names.

Then it was loading for a few minutes and after about few minutes it again showed me “An error has occurred - …”. I tried to go to Base history to see if I can restore the base, unfortunately the history was empty, no snapshots to restore and it was also there showing the circle sign saying it is loading the snapshot history. After refreshing the page several times, I was able to access Airtable again.

Unfortunately it didn’t duplicate the table at all. Now after almost 20 minutes still sitting and waiting for Airtable to load fully, It shows blue progress bar. It took about 2 minutes to load fully. It feels like the base recovered from a snapshot because that’s how it feels.

I tried that again. Created a paranoid snapshot first.

Used another browser another machine to replicate this. Same issue. Different system, different browser including standard Airtable supported browsers.

After another round of 15 minutes or so I was able to copy the table.

It never occurred in the past that Airtable would crash on me like this and be so slow when copying an almost empty table.

I’ll send this to support. Weird I am a bit concerned now. Will think twice before I am going to create a copy of any table from now on.

Hmmm that’s really odd. I duplicated a massive table this morning. For me, I was allowed to keep working and then a couple mins later it asked me to refresh and after I did, the duplicated table was listed. Reading this made me paranoid so I double checked the work I did while waiting and it is all in there, so I don’t think it reverted back / data loss occurred. Definitely worth flagging to support since this sounds like a bug!

It is possible my extensions are causing it. I have about 50 extensions or so installed and many active so maybe that’s what slowing down copy process. I don’t like turn on the extensions off because it is such a pain to do that.