Troubleshooting common attachments issues

If you encounter problems with attachments in Support, use this guide to find solutions to the most common issues.

The article contains the topics below:

Uploading attachment failed

User is required to login when opening attachments

Unable to download attachments due to potential malware

Attachment is delivered as link and not an actual file

Private attachment in a messaging ticket

Uploading attachment failed

When a customer attempts to upload an attachment that's too big, a warning appears in the related ticket comment, informing you that you have exceeded the required maximum file size.

If the user sends a file too large for the plan type, an error message the file is too large appears, and the file is not attached. The error is also logged in the audit trail as an event. To see it, view all the events of the ticket.

Ensure your file is within the size limits for your plan. Alternatively, Zendesk also offers applications such as Box app integration to help share large files. When attachments are sent through email, the MIME email encoding expands the attachment in size by 33%.

Note:Images work differently because if you use Markdown, you can embed the image into the body of the message. The displayed image must be a public-facing link.

For more information, see this article: Attachment size limitations.

User is required to login when opening attachments

When user is restricted to download the attachment, its probably because the Enable secure downloads is activated to ensure additional layer of security. User must logged in to their account to have access or disable this feature if its not necessary in your workflow.

Unable to download attachments due to potential malware

Users may send files that pose a risk to the recipient and see a Malware detected warning, preventing them from downloading the attachment.

Zendesk security scanning ensures that incoming attachments are safe to download. If this happens, reach out to an admin as they can overrides the malware identification.

For more information, see this article: Reviewing potential malware attachments.

Attachment is delivered as link and not an actual file

There are two possible reasons why an attachment is received as link and not an actual attachment file.

This is a default behavior if you have Standard comment placeholders in your email notification trigger

If Include attachments in emails is deactivated

When Include attachments in emails is turned on, the placeholder for rich text comment allows users to upload an email attachment instead of linked attachments.

Private attachment in a messaging ticket

On messaging tickets, for accounts created on or after December 5, 2024, private attachments are only visible to end users and the assignee of the ticket.

Tip: If users can’t upload a specific file type (for example, .exe or .zip), an admin may have restricted uploads by file type. Zendesk supports controlling which file types can be uploaded in your account using the Allowed file types settings in Admin center. You can customize the permitted file types to match your organization’s security requirements. More information can be found here: Restricting ticket attachments to Zendesk-recommended file types.