Blackboard Attaching

Known Issues

There is a known problem with file visibility for students when faculty post attachments to interactive tools such as the Discussion Board, Blogs, and Journals. Blackboard is working on repairing this in the next update.

For now, use caution in naming files AND titles to entries or posts in Blogs, Journals, and Discussion Boards. This means no apostrophes, ampersands, quotes, questions marks, parenthese, number signs. (See File Naming Guidelines.)

Attaching a document or image: (Students especially)

1. Save the document in the proper format with alpha-numeric characters and no spaces. (See naming guidelines)
2. Navigate to the area where you need to attach your file.
   • Note: For now, we recommend using the Attach File tool under the text box on the appropriate screen to attach files. We are experiencing difficulties with embedded files and images.
3. Click on Browse My Computer > highlight file > Click Open > Click Submit.

Faculty: If you have named your file and the Post title properly and it still isn't visible, please see Error 404 page for instructions for adding reader permissions to your files.

Preferred Formats:

For Documents:

• .rtf (Rich Text Format ... the most accessible, will open in any word processor)
• .pdf (Portable Document Format ... viewable by anyone with pdf viewer)
• .doc (Word Document ... most commonly used word processing format, but not accessible to everyone)

For Presentations:

• .ppt or .pps (viewable by anyone with Powerpoint or a free Powerpoint Viewer)
• .pdf

For images:

• .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png are all viewable by anyone in browser. Be sure the tag matches the filetype.
• DO NOT USE .bmp, .tiff, .eps, .psd or raw format files.
• limit size to no larger than 600 pixels in the largest dimension.
• for a headshot, or a photo not needing a lot of detail, a pixel dimension of between 150 and 250 in the widest dimension is ideal

Note: Even if you have successfully added files with improper names or filetypes in the past, it does not mean that other people, using other browsers or operating systems, will be able to access them. The above are the safest measures.