File Attachment Columns

Imagine you’re planning to create an Art Gallery database and need to store previews of paintings or a Contract Management database for organizing contracts and documents. In such cases, you can add File Attachment Columns to include documents or graphic file attachments.

Please note that the maximum size for any attached file is 100 MB. However, the number of revisions kept in the column doesn’t matter.

General Properties

Attachment general properties

If a column contains data that doesn’t appear or behave as you desire, you can edit the column’s General Properties.

Attachment Options

Attachment options

Properties defined by the column type:

Display Text: This property allows a user to display a text value in the corresponding table cell instead of the attached file name.
Revisions: This property enables a user to keep and view the revision history of an attached file:

Revisions

Keep the last (n) revisions checkbox allows you to retain data for a specific number of revisions of the same attached file and enter the necessary value for the number of revisions in the list;
Keep all revisions checkbox preserves data for all revisions of the same attached file.

Revision History: This property allows a user to manage the history of file revisions. Select the "Allow See Revision History" checkbox if you want to view the history of file changes.

As a result the Revisions button will be displayed near the file attachment field on the View form.

Revision History

Type: You can choose one of the following file attachment types: File, Image, Signature.

File: the attachment will be displayed as an attached document;
Image: attached graphic files will be displayed directly in the table;
Signature: allows to capture a signature directly on a touch device and save the result as an image.

The following maximum size options are available for List Style and Form Style:

Size	List	Form
Small	50x50px	120x120px
Medium	100x100px	240x240px
Large	200x200px	480x480px
X-large	400x400px	960x960px

No file name: Allows to hide names of attached images.
Validation: Enable this option to enforce file type validation for attachment columns.
Valid File Types: Enter the comma-separated list of file extensions that are valid for selection. As long as Valid File Types list is specified, the browser restricts the selection to listed file types.
Validation Message: Specify the text to display to the user when invalid file is selected. If not provided, we end up with generic message.
Open in New Window: This property allows a user to specify how the file is opened. Select the "Open in New Window" checkbox if you want to open file attachments in new windows.
Allow Public Access: To access a file attachment, a user should follow a link generated by TeamDesk. However, a link requires a user to log in before downloading a file, which may cause difficulties when data are shared via email notifications because a file attachment is not accessible to persons who are not database users. To avoid this problem, you can activate the "Allow Public Access" option, which allows access to a file attachment without requiring a user to log in.

Moreover, in case you need to create a lookup column displaying another lookup showing an image kept in a File Attachment column, you also have to activated the Allow Public Access option, otherwise the image will not be visible in such lookups that display other lookup columns.

Help: When the Help text property is filled in, a question mark is displayed near the field name on the View/Edit form. Hovering over this question mark will display a pop-up with a tip or a help text message.