Making Record Order Consistent in Airtable

You’ve got a set of records lined up exactly the way you want them. They show up in the order they were created.

Then you create a new view and filter it by a person’s name.

Suddenly, the order does not match your initial view. The records now appear shuffled and out of sequence.

You have not added any sorting settings, so the order should stay the same.

So why is this happening? Shouldn’t the records remain in the same order? What is really going on here?

Why records go out of order in Airtable

When you first create a view, Airtable shows records in the order they were created.

If you sort a view by any field, Airtable remembers that order. Turning off the sort does not bring records back to creation order. They stay in the order of the last sort.

Each view keeps its own memory of sorting. This is why two different views of the same table can show records in different orders, even if no sorting is active.

How to keep records in order

If the order of your records matters, do not rely on Airtable’s unsorted view. It can change at any time.

The better way is to create a field you can sort by. You can use an autonumber field, which numbers records in the order they were created. You can use a created time field, which shows the exact time a record was added.

Or you can make your own manual order field, such as a number field, where you set the order yourself.

Once you have one of these fields, apply a sort on it. Your records will always stay in the order you want.

To sum up, unsorted order in Airtable cannot be trusted. It only shows the last order Airtable remembers.

If you need records to stay in a certain order, create a field to sort by and use it. That way your views will always be consistent.