Articles in this section
See more
Articles in this section ▾
Why can’t I access an Airtable attachment?
How Airtable’s Blocks SDK handles attachment URLs
Changes to Airtable attachments
Attachment field
Reorder files in an attachment field
Viewing attachments
Attachment commenting
Attachment annotations
Troubleshooting issues with uploading attachments
Can I edit images in Airtable?
See more

Viewing attachments

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. 

IN THIS ARTICLE

Thumbnail previews
Full-screen document previews
Limitations for attachment previews

 

Thumbnail previews

thumbnail_preview.gif

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)

TIP

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.

 

Full-screen document previews

full-screen_preview.gif

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. 

 

NOTE

For more information on supported audio file types click here.

 

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.
  • 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.
  • Small-sized files (1-byte) cannot be previewed on m.box.com
  • 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. 

Was this article helpful?

Related articles