Can You Edit Airtable Offline?

Unfortunately, you can’t edit data stored in Airtable offline. Opening the records you want to work on before disconnecting from the Internet and hoping the changes will be saved the next time you have a connection isn’t recommended, either. While this is the best way to use Notion offline, it often results in data loss in Airtable, so best to avoid that supposed workaround.

Instead, Airtable recommends that you export your Airtable records, edit them in a spreadsheet-creation software like Microsoft Excel, then upload them as a CSV the next time you’re connected to the Internet. However, we don’t recommend this, especially if you use AIrtable to collaborate — it’s a recipe for disaster that’ll result in data loss and duplicates floating around.

Airtable has another solution too: It recommends leveraging its API to create a solution that would periodically fetch all your data and save it in a location that would allow for offline editing, with a feedback loop that updates that record in Airtable after it has been updated. Of course, this isn’t a viable solution for most as it’s would require advanced coding to build it.

Offline access is a common request from Airtable users, so we can’t help but think some sort of support will be added in the future. It’s not like some of the alternatives out there don’t offer it — rival Asana rolled out offline editing on iOS back in 2016. This should see users able to create, edit and delete records while offline, syncing when their connection is restored.

Of course, Airtable isn’t alone in not offering offline access: Even though Notion says its Desktop application supports it, the feature isn’t fleshed out. It merely lets you opem the last Page(s) you opened while you’re offline, then edit them and the changes will be synced the next time your’e connected. You can’t flag several to be downloaded for offline access.