Why are the images in my tickets broken?

Question

Why are the images in my Support tickets broken and not displaying when I view them in the agent interface?

Answer

This problem is often the result of Support not having permission to access the image. Zendesk inherits the access permissions for images added to the agent interface in the same way the help center does. For information about help center article images, see the article: Working with the image gallery.

When the image is broken, that means that it is not hosted in the agent interface. The agent interface attempts to load the image from the source. Zendesk doesn't save and host images locally when they are copied and pasted from another source that is already hosted. Instead, Zendesk copies the link to the image and then references the link in the ticket to display the image.

To avoid this issue, add the image as an attachment and drag it in-line to host it directly within the ticket. Copy and paste the image from a source that is not restricted or from a local location on your computer.

The example below shows how to save the image locally and host it in Support:

An image is received in an email in Google mail.

Select the download button on the image to download the image to your computer. Alternatively, right-click the image and select Save image, which also downloads the image.

Copy and paste or upload the saved image from your computer's local location into the Support ticket.

If you are unsure whether this is the cause of the issue, open your browser's console and check for a Failed to load resource error. If you see this, it indicates that this hosting issue is the cause of the broken images.

Other potential causes for broken images include the following:

An antivirus or proxy could be blocking the images. Check with your System Admin to verify if these tools are added to your device.

If your images are too large, some email providers such as Outlook could be preventing them from displaying correctly in tickets. The best way to avoid this is to reduce the image size.

Certain browsers may have a caching issues that stop the image from loading correctly. Clear your cache and cookies to address this problem.

For more information, see the article: Adding attachments to ticket comments.