How to Automatically Link Airtable Form Submissions to Existing Records (or Create New Ones)

You collect registrations through Airtable forms. Each time someone fills out the form, a new record appears in the Registration Forms table with their details.

Now, what you want is simple.

If the person filling out the form already exists in your Clients table, Airtable should automatically link their new registration to that existing client record.

But if it is a brand-new person, Airtable should create a new client record and link it to the registration automatically.

The good news is that you can fully automate this logic with a simple Airtable automation.

Step 1: Set the Trigger

Start with an automation that triggers when a new Registration Form is submitted.

Step 2: Find the Client by Email

Next, add a Find Records action. Search in your Clients table where the email field matches the email submitted through the form.

If the client already exists, the automation will find one record. If not, the result will be empty.

Step 3: Add Conditional Logic

Now, add a Conditional (If-Else) action.

If the Find Records step returns one result, that means the client already exists. In that case, simply update the registration record and link it to the client record you found in the Find Records step.

If no record is found, create a new record in the Clients table using the form data, and while creating it, link it directly to the registration record. This keeps the relationship consistent without needing any extra steps.

Handling Repeat Submissions

If a client submits the registration form multiple times, the automation will handle that automatically.

Since Airtable’s linked record fields work both ways, every time the registration form links to a client, the client record will also show that new registration in its linked records.

This way, your Clients table will always display all the registration forms submitted by that person automatically.