Viewing attachments in Airtable

The attachment field allows you to store any type of file within a record. Depending on the file type, Airtable will generate a small thumbnail preview of the document, and/or a full-screen document preview. This article covers the different file types that support previews.

Thumbnail previews

Thumbnails appear as a small preview of the document file, which will adjust based on row height. Thumbnail previews are generated for the following file types:

• Image and design files (.png, .jpg, .gif, .svg, .psd, and .tiff file formats)
• Word documents (.doc and .docx)
• Excel files (.xls, .xlsx, and .csv)
• Text files (.txt)
• PDF documents (.pdf)
• Powerpoint presentations without embedded videos (.ppt and .pptx)

Full-screen document previews

Full-screen attachment previews provide a way to view (or playback) the supported file types (below), but not edit them directly in Airtable. We support viewing the following file types:

• Image and design files (.png, .jpg, gif, .svg, .psd, and .tiff file formats)
• Video files in HTML5 format (.mp4, .webM, and .ogg / .ogv files) , which are browser dependent
• Word documents (.doc and .docx)
• Excel files (.xls, .xlsx, and .csv)
• Text files (.txt)
• PDF documents (.pdf)
• Powerpoint presentations without embedded videos (.ppt and .pptx)
• XML data (.xml)

Mobile apps

In general, our mobile apps offer similar functionality as listed above. In some cases, file types not supported on the desktop version of Airtable may actually be supported on mobile.

Limitations for attachment previews

• Excel preview does not follow time information in the original file. When previewing Excel documents, the time-related functions (for example, TODAY() or TIME()) do not display accurately. This is because Excel date/time functions are dynamic, while the previewed document is static. The document preview obtains and displays the date the file was previewed. A static version of the time/date is displays in the previewed document, based on the time the preview was generated.
• You cannot preview password-protected files.
• There is a maximum attachment limit of 5GB for any file, though certain files can cause issues before this limitation.
• Small-sized files (1-byte) cannot be previewed on m.box.com
• There is a technical limit of 100 million pixels for previewable images. Images larger than this limit can be uploaded, but will not have a preview.
• Hyperlinks do not work in PowerPoint files in previews on either the Web, m.box, or mobile applications.
• Videos embedded in Powerpoint files do not work in Preview.
• Animations and page transitions in PowerPoint do not work in preview.
• Adobe PDF Portfolios are not supported by Box Preview.
• GIFs will not preview if they are too large. Try to keep GIFs under 5MB to enable previewing.
  • If your GIF does not preview, we recommend trying to re-upload it. Unfortunately, we are aware of this limitation, and we are working to increase preview reliability over time.

FAQs