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:
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Image and design files (.png, .jpg, .gif, .svg, .psd, and .tiff file formats)
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Word documents (.doc and .docx)
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Excel files (.xls, .xlsx, and .csv)
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Text files (.txt)
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PDF documents (.pdf)
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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 attachment previews provide a way to view the supported file types (below), but not edit them directly in Airtable. We support viewing the following file types:
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Image and design files (.png, .jpg, gif, .svg, .psd, and .tiff file formats)
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Video files in HTML5 format (.mp4, .webM, and .ogg / .ogv files), which are browser dependent
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Word documents (.doc and .docx)
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Excel files (.xls, .xlsx, and .csv)
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Text files (.txt)
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PDF documents (.pdf)
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Powerpoint presentations without embedded videos (.ppt and .pptx)
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XML data (.xml)
Limitations for attachment previews
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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.
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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.
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Hyperlinks do not work in PowerPoint files in previews on either the Web, m.box, or mobile applications.
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Videos embedded in Powerpoint files do not work in Preview.
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Animations and page transitions in PowerPoint do not work in preview.
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Adobe PDF Portfolios are not supported by Box Preview.
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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.