Rename Uploaded Files

[Dean_Toland]

I think it would be great to be able to update the names of files once they’re uploaded; this is especially needed when linking images or files from online instead of uploading since you have no control on the naming structure for those external files. I’ve recently found that searching a base includes what’s in the filename and this is becoming problematic since I often link to images on the web that have a lot of text in the filename that I would prefer not to be there.

I think the ability to edit properties of uploaded files once they’re in the base would be a huge help.

[Katherine_Duh]

Hi! Being able to change file names from within Airtable is a good suggestion, and one that I’ll definitely pass on to the team. You also said that you’d like the ability to edit properties of uploaded files once they’re in the base—besides file name, what kinds of properties would you like to edit?

[Dean_Toland]

Ideally, images spring to mind more than anything. In terms of basic editing, simply allowing cropping alone would be a massive improvement. When pulling schematics or item photos from online and uploading via link, you’re stuck with whatever filename and whatever size they provide. It’d be a huge benefit to be able to rename a file and trip back excess space.

On a more advanced note, actual photo/PDF markup would be a dream come true. The ability for someone to drop a note icon or highlight an area of a photo or uploaded PDF and then “@” tag someone on it. Right now the comments can be made on the field level, not the file level, so what happens when you have 10 things attached to a single record? Comments can get lost, especially if you can’t even tell which filename to reference since once uploaded you lose control and might not have an easily distinguished name assigned.

This is what comes off the top of my head, maybe others will have more ideas. :slightly_smiling_face: Thanks Katherine!

[Chester_McLaugh]

Renaming attachments would be super helpful.

My use at the moment is that I have logos attached to records for each organization in my base. I would like to adopt a simple naming convention that would identify the full color logo image attachment from a grayscale logo-mark attachment. And while I could create multiple fields to achieve this, the filename would be a really useful place to “store” a little extra info.

Other uses would be to identify (through the filename) a “featured” image, rather than talking clients through reording the images so the “first” image (which is visually confusing as “first in” appears to be “first out” in the UI but in the API it truly is first in first out… anyway).

Another use case is I have a table of Lodging/Hotel/Accommodations and I could use the filename as a simple caption, or simply to identify “interior.jpg”, “exterior.jpg”, “amenities.jpg”, etc.

[Emmett_Nicholas]

This is coming soon :slightly_smiling_face:

[Chester_McLaugh]

Great news! Thanks so much!

[Matt_Bush]

Attachment file renaming is now supported on web and desktop!

See this gif for an example:

[Dean_Toland]

Perfect! Thanks @Matt_Bush and to the rest of the team who worked on this. :slightly_smiling_face:

[Maor_Conforti]

Excellent!
When will this functionality be available through API?

[Nilesh_Shep]

Is there any option to set file name format for attachments? Example users is uploading file named img001 that can be changed automatically to airtable001.

[Lauralee_Willia]

It would also be great to be able to caption individual images. I am attempting to organise images by project, in order to upload these projects onto a blog. Each image requires an ALT text to go along with it for ADA requirements of the blog audience. I’d like to use an airtable form to collect images from my classmates and then to manually add the alt text to each attachment in order to upload this information to the website. Right now I am not able to link individual attachments to a separate table and add alt text because when I link the tables, my images get converted to text. This then messes with my form and makes it a multiple select form instead of an attachment form. Simply put, it would be really useful to add a caption for each attachment within a record so that all the attachments from one form submission can stay together. Hope this makes some sense…