How to recover deleted records, tables or bases in Airtable

The short version

Restore a deleted record, field, table or view

1. Open the base the item was in.
2. Click the base history icon in the top-right corner, next to Share.
3. Choose Trash.
4. Find the item and click Restore.

Editors can restore records and views; restoring tables and fields needs Creator permission. After restoring, check any linked-record, lookup and rollup fields that pointed at what was deleted, and any automations or interfaces that used it.

Restore a deleted base

1. Go to your Airtable home screen.
2. Click your profile picture (top right) and choose Trash.
3. Click Restore next to the base.

Only workspace owners can restore a base. Deleted bases stay for 30 days; that window is longer only on Enterprise Scale, where admins can set it.

Get back a value someone overwrote

Overwritten cells don't go to the trash. Expand the record and look through its revision history, which shows earlier values for that one record. How far back it goes depends on your plan: two weeks on Free, a year on Team, two years on Business, three on Enterprise Scale. There is no way to search or export revision history across a whole table.

More than 7 days ago? Use a snapshot, carefully

Airtable takes snapshots of busy bases automatically, and you can take one by hand from the same base history menu. Restoring one (base history → pick the snapshot → name it → Create) doesn't roll your base back. It creates a separate copy as a new base, with a new base ID.

• Your original base keeps running untouched, with everything that happened since.
• Anything that points at your base by its ID (API integrations, Zapier or Make scenarios, embedded forms, syncs) keeps pointing at the original, not at the restored copy.
• Revision history doesn't come with the snapshot.

So the usual move is: restore the snapshot, find the records you need in the copy, and paste or CSV-import them back into the original base. Snapshots can't be downloaded or scheduled, and a workspace that changes plans often can lose them early.

The hard part: knowing what was deleted

The trash only lists what's still in it. If a teammate, an automation or an import removed rows last month, Airtable won't tell you which ones. Revision history is per record, so a record that no longer exists is hard to look up. Most people find out when a report looks wrong or a client asks where something went, often after the 7 days are up.

The only reliable way to know is to compare against a copy from before. If you have a CSV export or a snapshot from a known date, compare the record IDs or record counts per table against today. Going forward, a daily backup that compares each copy with the day before can tell you the morning after: these 15 records left the Content table, with every value they held.

So it doesn't happen again

• Lock down deletion. Give people who only add data Editor or Commenter access instead of Creator, and use interfaces or forms for data entry.
• Keep a copy outside Airtable. Snapshots live inside the same account they're protecting. Download a whole base now, free.
• Find out the next morning, not next month. A daily receipt of what was added, edited and deleted turns a silent mistake into a quick restore, while the records are still in the trash.

Questions

Sources, checked October 15, 2026: Airtable: managing trash · Airtable: base snapshots · Airtable: record revision history. Nightclerk is not affiliated with Airtable. Compare backup options.