Issue with Airtable Email Automation Corrupting Form URLs - Missing Underscores in Parameters

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1

Hey everyone,

I’m having trouble with Airtable’s email automation feature. When I send automated emails containing form URLs with prefilled data, the links get corrupted.

I’ve created a formula that builds a URL to prefill form fields with existing data like name, email, phone, location, etc. Here’s my formula setup:

"https://airtable.com/appYYYYYYYYYYYYYY/pagYYYYYYYYYYYYYY/form"
& "?prefill_Full%20Name=" & ENCODE_URL_COMPONENT({Full Name})
& "&prefill_Contact%20Email=" & ENCODE_URL_COMPONENT({Contact Email})
& "&prefill_Phone%20Number=" & ENCODE_URL_COMPONENT({Phone Number})
& "&prefill_Location=" & ENCODE_URL_COMPONENT({Location})
& "&prefill_Status=" & ENCODE_URL_COMPONENT({Status})

When I test this URL manually by pasting it into my browser, everything works great. All the form fields get populated correctly.

But here’s the weird part - when Airtable sends this URL through email automation, it strips out the underscores from most of the prefill parameters. Instead of prefill_Full%20Name, I get prefillFull%20Name. Strangely, the last parameter keeps its underscore intact.

The broken URL in emails looks like:

https://airtable.com/YYYYYYYYYYYY/YYYYYYYYYYYY/form?prefillFull%20Name=Jane&prefillContact%[email protected]&prefillPhone%20Number=1234567890&prefillLocation=New%20York&prefill_Status=Active

I’ve tried different approaches like storing the URL in a text field first, then referencing that in the email. I’ve also double-checked my field names and formula syntax. Everything looks correct.

Has anyone else run into this problem? Why would Airtable’s email system modify URLs like this? Any suggestions for fixing this would be really helpful.

2

Yeah, this is a known Airtable bug. I’ve hit this same issue on multiple projects and it’s frustrating as hell.

Airtable’s email parser treats underscores like markdown formatting and strips them out. Sometimes it leaves the last parameter alone, sometimes it doesn’t - totally inconsistent.

Here’s what works:

Swap underscores for hyphens in your parameter names. Change prefill_Full%20Name to prefill-Full%20Name. Your form will still recognize the parameters fine.

Or URL encode the underscores - replace them with %5F. So prefill_Full%20Name becomes prefill%5FFull%20Name.

I prefer hyphens since they’re cleaner and work better across different email clients.

Another trick: use a URL shortener. Create your full URL, shorten it, then drop the shortened version in your email automation. This completely bypasses Airtable’s URL parsing.

This video shows similar URL parameter techniques:

The hyphen method should fix your problem though. Test it with a few records first to make sure your form still accepts the modified parameter names.

3

Ugh, dealt with this exact issue last month! So frustrating. Fixed it by wrapping the entire URL in CONCATENATE instead of using & operators. Airtable’s email system handles concatenated strings differently for some reason. Also try tacking on random characters at the end like &test=1 - sometimes that prevents the parser from breaking your parameters.