Airtable Permissions: Editor vs. Creator (and Personal Views)

Sharing access to a database comes with a bunch of options - but it can be hard to understand the best choice for every case. In this video, I walk through the massive differences between the Editor and Creator levels of permission inside of Airtable.

As a general rule, I tend to advise clients to only have one or two users per base at the Creator permission level. Creators basically have unchecked access to the entire database - they can create formulas, add/delete fields, create new tables, etc. Basically, they can do whatever they want!

While you may initially think this sounds great, I'd caution you to ask yourself how many times you've worked with a broken Excel template. I don't know about you, but I've seen more than my fair share of those. The story usually goes something like this: "[Insert name here] built that for us a few years ago - he hasn't worked here for a while and we didn't really know how to use the tool, so it's seen a lot of wear over the years. No one really even knows what it does anymore..."

This story is all too familiar, and thanks to permissions in Airtable, it doesn't have to be your database's destiny.

By contrast to Creator permissions, Editor permissions do NOT allow the creation of tables, fields, or formulas. However, these users CAN work with the data, edit records, and edit or create views. They can work in the database, they just can't work ON the database.

I tend to see small teams with one or two creators, and the rest of the users (if they need to alter the data) are usually editors. If you're giving away Creator permissions like candy, you might reconsider the permission level of your users - it will save you a lot of headaches on the back end.