Preserving Filenames

[Jordan_Davis1]

The fact that files are automatically renamed when uploaded through appsheet is hugely disruptive and I don’t understand why it was ever implemented. I understand that filenames have to be unique, however, this could be resolved by having a separate ‘alias’ id column or even just preserving the original filename but adding a unique ID to the end of the filename. For example, I have users uploading documents that need to be reviewed by other users and the filename is indicative of the documents contents.

Also, it’d be great if there was an option to add the filename to the column AND the corresponding Drive link to a separate column. Thanks!

[Grant_Stead]

Right! I think it would be awesome to keep the exif data intact and accessible. Maybe an EXIFDATA() expression with different arguments.

[Jordan_Davis1]

YES!!! Huge vote for an EXIFDATA() feature. This would also be amazing with the OCR feature for photos.

[John_Kent1]

Agreed, my work around is not in appsheet. Its in how you name the file.

Im keeping the entire file name by starting the name with period and not using any other periods in the file name. This adds the entire file name to the unique id created by appsheet.

so if I had file named like this 1234.location.06.03.2021, it would pretty much scrap the entire file name on upload.

if I name it like this

.1234_location_06_04_2021

It adds that entire file name to the unique id .

[Jordan_Davis1]

That’s pretty genius. That would work if I was the only one adding files but this would be hard to convince all of my users to remember to do. Thanks for sharing that tip though, I would have never thought of that.