How to Append a Tag to a Multi-Select Field in Airtable (Without Overwriting the Existing Ones)

You have a base where each Contact has a Tags field, a multi select field you use to track how people interact with your business.

Some contacts are tagged as Newsletter Subscriber, some as Webinar Attendee, and some as Customer.

Now you want to create an automation that adds a tag when someone submits a form.

For example, whenever a person fills out your Product Feedback Form, you want Airtable to automatically add a tag called Feedback Submitted to their record.

So you set up an automation like this:

Trigger: When a new Product Feedback Form submission is received
Action: Update record → Tags → Feedback Submitted

But instead of adding the new tag, Airtable replaces everything that was already in the Tags field.

If the contact originally had Customer and Webinar Attendee, those tags get deleted, leaving only Feedback Submitted.

This is not what you want.

You want the automation to add the new tag to the Tags field while keeping all the existing ones.

If the contact already has Customer and Webinar Attendee, you want it to become
Customer, Webinar Attendee, Feedback Submitted.

Append a Tag in a Multi Select Field

If you insert the original value from the trigger record, add a comma, and then type whatever needs to be appended, Airtable Automations will append multi select field values correctly.

Here is how to set it up step by step:

• Add an Update record action in your automation.

• Choose the record ID from the trigger step.

• Under Fields, select your multi select field, for example Tags.

• Click the small gear icon next to the field name to switch it to dynamic mode.

• Click the plus icon and select the Tags field from the trigger record. This brings in the current tags.

• After that, type a comma and then the new tag you want to add, for example

  {Tags}, Feedback Submitted

When the automation runs, Airtable keeps all the existing tags and adds Feedback Submitted to the list.