How to Import Data in Airtable

As you transition to Airtable, there's a great chance that you'll need to first import data from your previous or current system. In many cases, this can sound quite cumbersome, but Airtable has actually created a simple process by which to do this.

One thing that should be added to this is the need to get accurate date/time stamps of the creation of your data. Already available to you, Airtable has a field called the "Created Time" that will show you meta data of each record - specifically when that record was created. However, relying on this field alone isn't sufficient when you're importing data. This is due to the fact that your imported data will have created dates (often given from your existing software) that will not correspond with the date/time stamp in Airtable. 

And of course, this makes sense! How could we expect Airtable to know data from our old system unless we tell it? So, to overcome this, you'll effectively track three separate dates, namely:

1. Actual Created Date
2. Airtable's Created Date
3. Actual Created Date

Or, as I call them in this video:

1. Import Date
2. Created Date*
3. Created Date

Check out this video to learn the logic that I apply in order to get these three dates working together, as well as tips on using the CSV Import Block to quickly bring in a set of data from a CSV file.