The attachment field type allows you to attach multiple files directly to your records. You can attach different field types including: mp3s, PDFs, photos, and word documents. 

Adding attachments

If you have added an attachment field to your table you'll be able to attach files directly to an individual record by first expanding that record. In an expanded record's view you'll see three options for interacting with an attachment field:

Tapping the camera icon will open up your mobile device's camera—allowing you to take a picture that will be directly attached to that record. 

Here is an example picture we took after clicking the camera icon:

Once you've confirmed your picture you can see it attached to that record:

Tapping on the second icon, which resembles a painting, will allow you to select an image from your phone's stored files to attach to the record.

You can select from any of the images you currently have stored on your phone:

Tapping the ellipsis icon will enable you to upload files from a variety of other sources, including from a web search or from your Dropbox or Google Drive account. 

After clicking the ellipsis icon you'll see a file explorer allowing you to select from either local or cloud sources: 

Viewing attachments

The attachment field will show thumbnail previews of any files you've attached to a record. You can tap on a file to open in an expanded preview:

On iOS, from the bottom of the expanded preview, you can tap the download icon on the left to bring up a variety of sharing and downloading options, or you can tap the trashcan icon on the right to delete the attachment.

Clicking on the "share" option will open up the following menu:

Clicking on the "trash" icon will bring up the option to delete that attachment:

On Android: the record's expanded view looks a bit different. Though the functionality for sharing, deleting, or downloading an attachment is essentially the same: 

On Android you can also see all of your attachment's available options by clicking on the ellipsis icon.

Comments on attachments

Attachment comments are similar to record comments except you can leave them on any attachment. This allows you to have separate conversations for each individual attachment in a record. If the attachment you are viewing is an image, that attachment may also have attachment annotations. Attachment annotations are comments tied to a specific position on an Airtable attachment.

Viewing comments on attachments

You can view of an attachment's current comments, and annotations, by clicking on the icon that looks like a speech bubble under an attachment:

This will open a menu where you can see comments on that attachment, as well as annotations if that attachment is an image:

Note that we do not currently support viewing video annotations in realtime—any existing video annotations will be visible in the "Comments" log. 

Creating and editing comments on attachments

Android app users can add, edit, or delete comments on attachments directly. You can add a new new comment directly to an attachment by clicking on the speech bubble icon to open up the comment menu. From there you can add a comment directly by typing in the "Add comment" input. You can also edit or delete an existing comment, or annotation, by clicking on the ellipsis next to that comment. 

If you are working with an image, you can add an annotation by clicking on the ellipsis menu and selecting "Add annotation" option:

You will then be prompted to select the part of the screen you'd like to annotate, before adding text for that annotation. You can also toggle the visibility of an image's annotations from that image's ellipsis menu:

Note that we do not support creating video annotations at this time.

Watch the video below to see the whole process of adding a comment, adding an annotation, and  hiding/revealing all annotations on an image:

FAQ

Does the attachment field compress image files?

We don’t change or degrade the quality of attachments that you upload to Airtable. If you download an attachment from Airtable, you’ll get an exact copy of the file you originally uploaded. If you need to compress your images—we recommend using a third-party app and then uploading your newly compressed images into Airtable. 

Can I use HEIC formatted images?

Thumbnails and previews of HEIC files are not currently supported in Airtable. For now, you could set your iPhone to save photos as JPG files instead of HEIC to work around this limitation.