You are about to point a sync at an Airtable table with twenty-something fields in it. Some of them you built two years ago and have not thought about since. Before you commit, you want to know which of those columns will land in Google Sheets in a state you can build a client report on.
Most of them arrive fine. About five do not. The problem is that the five that do not look exactly like the ones that do. A rollup that lands in the cell as 48,200 sits there looking every bit as solid as a number someone typed by hand. It is not the same thing. It is a photograph of a number, taken at the moment of the sync.
This is a pass through the whole field list, one type at a time. For each: what you actually see in the cell, what you can safely sort, filter and pivot on, and what will catch you out three weeks later when a client questions a total.
The short answer
Every Airtable field falls into one of three groups once it reaches a spreadsheet.
Stored fields are things a person typed or picked: text, number, currency, single select, checkbox, date, collaborator. They arrive as themselves. Sort them, filter them, pivot on them, total them.
Computed fields are things Airtable works out: formula, rollup, lookup, count. They arrive as an answer with no working behind it, correct at the moment it was fetched, and nothing in the spreadsheet will update it again except another sync.
Container fields hold more than one thing at a time: multiple select, linked record, attachment. A spreadsheet cell holds one thing, so they arrive squashed into a comma-joined string. Read them freely. Do not filter or pivot on them until you have split them apart.
This article exists because the cell gives you no clue which group you are looking at.
What every field type looks like in the cell
Formatting varies a little between tools. What does not vary is the shape of the value and what you are allowed to do with it.
| Airtable field |
What lands in the cell |
Analyse it? |
Watch for |
| Single line text |
The text, unchanged |
Yes |
Nothing |
| Long text |
The text, line breaks and all, inside one cell |
Read only |
Paragraph breaks live inside the cell |
| Long text, rich text on |
The text with its formatting marks showing |
Read only |
Bold and bullets arrive as stray symbols |
| Number |
The number |
Yes |
Decimal places are formatting, not the value |
| Currency |
The number, with a currency format applied |
Yes |
The symbol is formatting. The value is a bare number |
| Percent |
A decimal. 25% arrives as 0.25 |
Yes |
Do not multiply by 100 a second time |
| Duration |
A h:mm:ss string, or a count of seconds |
Careful |
Not something Sheets can total unaided |
| Rating |
A number, or a row of stars |
Careful |
If it arrives as stars, you cannot average it |
| Checkbox |
TRUE or FALSE |
Yes |
Blank and FALSE both mean unticked |
| Single select |
The option name |
Yes |
The option colour does not travel |
| Multiple select |
Every chosen option in one cell, comma joined |
Split it first |
Filtering on it matches partial words |
| Date |
The date |
Yes |
Check the timezone before you trust it |
| Date and time |
The date and the time, in UTC |
Careful |
This is the off-by-a-day bug |
| Created time |
A timestamp, in UTC |
Yes, for order |
Same timezone question as any date |
| Last modified time |
A timestamp, in UTC |
Yes, for order |
It moves for any edit by anyone, including a sync |
| Collaborator |
The person's name and email |
Yes |
Several collaborators comma-join into one cell |
| Attachment |
The filename, then a link |
Filename only |
The link stops working within hours |
| Linked record |
A comma-joined list of linked record names |
Read only |
The relationship itself does not travel |
| Lookup |
The values pulled from the other table, comma joined |
Careful |
Frozen, and often several values per cell |
| Rollup and count |
A single number |
Careful |
Frozen at sync time. Looks live. Is not |
| Formula |
The result |
Yes, if plain |
The formula does not travel. Nothing recalculates |
| Barcode |
The code, as text |
Yes |
Leading zeros can vanish |
| Button |
A clickable link |
No |
Nothing there to analyse |
| Autonumber |
A whole number |
As an ID, yes |
It is creation order, not a quantity |
| Airtable record ID |
A short code beginning with rec |
As a join key |
Never sum it, sort it, or chart it |
The rest of this article is the parts of that table that cost people money.
The text columns that break formulas
Long text keeps its line breaks. A field holding three paragraphs arrives as one cell holding three paragraphs. Nothing is lost, and the row is now four lines tall. If you later export that sheet to CSV for another system, those breaks inside the quoted cell are what break the import. If something downstream parses the file, add a formula field in Airtable that strips the breaks and sync that instead.
Rich text arrives with its markup visible. Switching on rich text formatting means the field no longer stores plain text. It stores text plus formatting marks, so a bolded phrase comes through wrapped in asterisks and a bulleted list comes through as lines beginning with dashes. It reads fine and it looks unpolished in a client-facing tab.
Multiple select is a trap dressed as a column. A record tagged Retail, Wholesale and Online arrives as one cell reading Retail, Wholesale, Online. Everything you now want to do with it is wrong. A pivot treats that string as one category, so you get a row per combination of tags rather than a row per tag. A filter for "Retail" also matches "Retail Partners". A COUNTIF for one tag misses every record where it is not the only one.
Split the column before you use it, with SPLIT or a QUERY on a helper tab, and pivot the split result. If a report is really built around those tags, the cheaper fix is upstream: a checkbox in Airtable per tag that matters, pivoted on directly.
Numbers that are not the number you saw
Percent arrives as a decimal. Airtable stores percentages the way spreadsheets do, so 100% is stored as 1 and 25% is stored as 0.25. Whether the cell shows 25% or 0.25 depends only on the number format applied on the way in. Every report that comes out four orders of magnitude too small has divided by 100 one time too many.
Currency arrives as a bare number. The dollar sign and the decimal places are display settings on both sides. That is good, because the column sums correctly. It is bad if two tables use different currencies and you total them together, because nothing in either cell says which currency it is.
Duration and rating stop being numbers. Airtable holds a duration as a count of seconds and a rating as a small whole number, and both often arrive formatted for human eyes: 1:30:00, or a row of filled and empty stars. Formatted that way they sort and read fine and average not at all. To total time tracked or average a rating, add a formula field in Airtable that outputs the plain number and sync that column.
Count and autonumber are both whole numbers and are not alike. A count is a real measure you can sum. Autonumber is an identifier that happens to be numeric, and averaging autonumbers gives you a number that means nothing.
The three columns that quietly mislead you
Linked records arrive as text, and the link is gone. In Airtable, a linked record cell is a set of live references. Click one and you land on the record. In a spreadsheet it is a comma-joined string and nothing more. Two clients called "Acme Ltd" in two different tables are now the same text, and a client renamed in Airtable no longer matches any historical row carrying the old name.
What appears in that string depends on the tool. Airtable's own CSV export writes the primary field value of each linked record, so you get readable names, and Airtable to Sheets does the same. Some tools read the raw connection instead and write Airtable's internal record references straight through, which is why a linked record column occasionally arrives full of short codes beginning with rec.
If that happens to you, the fix takes a minute and works everywhere: in Airtable, add a lookup field beside the linked record field that pulls the linked table's primary field, and sync the lookup rather than the link. It is worth doing even when the names come through, because a lookup is explicit about which field you are reporting on.
Lookups and rollups arrive frozen. A rollup is a live calculation in Airtable. Add an invoice and the total moves on its own. Synced into a spreadsheet, it is a number that has stopped. It was right at 09:00. At 14:00, after three invoices landed, it still shows the 09:00 answer and looks exactly as authoritative as it did five hours ago.
That is fine when you know. It is dangerous when someone else opens the sheet on Thursday and reads it as current. Put the sync timestamp somewhere visible on any tab carrying a rollup, and treat the refresh interval as part of the report's accuracy rather than a technical setting. Airtable to Google Sheets automatically covers how to pick it.
Formula results travel. Formulas do not. A formula field syncs as whatever it evaluated to. The expression stays in Airtable. Change the formula and every value already in your spreadsheet keeps the old answer until the next sync overwrites it.
Dates, people, and the columns you did not add
Dates need their own conversation. A date-only field is usually fine. A date and time field usually is not, because it travels in UTC and lands in a spreadsheet with a different timezone setting, which is why so many reports come out a day off at the edges of the month. Three settings are involved and most people change the wrong one. The diagnosis is in why your Airtable dates are wrong in Google Sheets.
Created time is stable, last modified time is not. Last modified moves whenever anyone touches the record, including automations and including a two-way sync writing a value back. It dates the edit, not the work.
Collaborator fields are better pivot dimensions than people expect. The values come from a fixed set of accounts, so they are consistent in a way a free-text owner column never is. If you group a report by who owns what, group on a collaborator field. Several collaborators comma-join, so the multiple select warning applies to them too.
Attachments have their own article and they need it. You get the filename and a link, the file is never copied anywhere, and Airtable only commits to keeping that link alive for at least two hours. No tool can extend that. Airtable attachments in Google Sheets covers what to build instead.
Barcode and button are read-only by nature. A barcode arrives as its code text, and leading zeros disappear unless the column is formatted as plain text first. A button arrives as a link if it points at a URL, and as nothing useful otherwise.
The record ID is the column you will end up relying on. It is not a field you add, it is the permanent identity of the row, and it is the only value in the sheet that survives someone renaming a client or reordering a view. Airtable to Sheets writes it into a locked column on every synced tab. Use it as the join key between the synced tab and anything you build on top.
Common questions
Which Airtable fields make the best pivot table dimensions?
Single select, checkbox, collaborator and date. All four hold one value from a known set, which is what a pivot needs. Multiple select and linked record are the two people reach for first and the two that break, because both hold a list. Building a pivot table from Airtable data works through the fixes.
Why can I not filter my multiple select column properly?
Because every chosen option sits in one cell as a comma-joined string. A filter for one option matches longer options containing the same word and misses records where that option is not listed first. Split the column into a helper range and filter the result, or add a checkbox in Airtable for the tags your report depends on.
Do Airtable formulas keep working in Google Sheets?
No. The result comes across, the formula stays behind. If you want a value that recalculates inside the spreadsheet, write the calculation in Sheets against the stored columns.
Why does my linked record column show codes instead of names?
Because that tool read Airtable's internal record references and wrote them straight through instead of asking for the display value. Add a lookup field in Airtable that pulls the linked table's primary field and sync that column instead. You then get readable text on every method, including CSV.
Can I edit these columns in the spreadsheet and push the change back?
Only the stored ones. Text, number, currency, percent, date, checkbox, single select and multiple select can be written back where two-way sync is available. Computed fields cannot, because Airtable will not accept a value for them. Attachments, linked records and collaborators are left alone too, since a flat cell of text is not enough to rebuild a file, a relationship or a user account.
Do field colours and conditional formatting come across?
Select option colours can be reproduced in the spreadsheet. Airtable's view-level conditional formatting does not travel, so rebuild anything visual on a separate tab.
What to change before your next sync
Four things, and all four happen in Airtable rather than in the spreadsheet.
- Add a lookup beside every linked record field you plan to report on, pulling the linked table's primary field, and sync the lookup.
- Replace the multiple select columns your reports depend on with one checkbox per tag that matters.
- Add a plain-number formula field beside any duration or rating you need to total or average.
- Decide, per column, whether it is there to be read or to be counted, and hide the read-only ones so nobody pivots on them by accident.
Then sync one page of records and read ten cells before you build anything on top. Two minutes of that catches every surprise in this article.
Once the columns are trustworthy, the question is what to build with them. Airtable to Google Sheets for reporting covers the tab structure that keeps a report alive through every refresh, and the full sync guide covers the four ways to get the data across in the first place.
