Let's say you have a table in Airtable with commission data for your sales team.
You want to take the data for each sales rep, turn it into a nicely formatted PDF, and attach that PDF back to the same Airtable record. From there, you might email it to the rep or simply keep it in Airtable for reference.
Airtable's Page Designer can handle the PDF layout. You can design the document, print it, and save it as a PDF.
The problem is everything after that.
Page Designer can't automatically generate the PDF and attach it back to the record. You have to save the file yourself and upload it to Airtable manually.
If you need this to happen automatically, there are two approaches I normally look at. Which one makes sense depends on where your data is coming from.
If the records already exist in Airtable
If the data is already in Airtable, you can use Make or n8n together with a document generation tool such as DocuMint or DocsAutomator.
The document generation tool handles the PDF template, while Make or n8n moves the data between Airtable and the template.
A typical workflow looks like this:
Airtable record is ready → Generate PDF → Attach PDF to the same record
For example, add a PDF Status field with options for Ready to Generate and Generated, then create a view that only shows records that are ready.
In Make, use Watch Records to watch that view. When a record appears, send its field values to your document generation tool and generate the PDF.
Keep the Airtable record ID from the first step. Once the PDF is generated, use Update a Record to attach the file back to that same record and change its status to Generated.
Make's Watch Records module requires a Created Time or Last Modified Time field, so make sure your table has one before setting up the scenario.
Depending on the document generation service you use, you can connect it to Make through a native integration or its API.
Once everything is running, all you need to do in Airtable is change a record's status to Ready to Generate. The PDF is generated and attached back to the record automatically.
If the data is coming through a form
If the Airtable record is being created from a form submission, I would look at Fillout before building the Make workflow.
Fillout can generate a PDF from the information someone enters into a form.
You upload your PDF template, map the form responses to the appropriate places in the document, and Fillout generates the completed PDF when the form is submitted.
Then, in the Airtable integration, map that generated document to an attachment field in your Airtable table.
When someone submits the form, the form responses and generated PDF can both be sent to Airtable together.
For this particular workflow, that removes the need to have Make sitting between the form and Airtable just to generate the document.
Which approach should you use?
The decision is pretty simple.
If the records already exist in Airtable, use Make or n8n with a document generation tool such as DocuMint or DocsAutomator.
If the records are being created through a form, Fillout can handle the form submission and PDF generation together.
Either way, you end up with the same result: the PDF is generated from your data and stored back in the correct Airtable record without somebody having to download and upload it manually.
For more complex layouts, see how to generate custom designed PDFs from Airtable data.
If the next step is sending the generated document to someone, see how to email a PDF attachment from Airtable.