Editing attached files
Asked by Jan Didden:

Hi,

New user here getting up to speed with Trello. One reason I selected it is because it supposedly allows:

'*Documents that are attached with Google Drive and OneDrive can be edited and saved in their respective applications and do not need to be downloaded, saved, and reattached to your card*.'

That doesn't seem to work for me. I have my data in OneDrive, and when I want to attach a file I navigate to the OneDrive folder on my PC and select the file. I can edit it from within Trello, but the edit is not reflected in the original file.

What happens is that the file, when opened for edit, is downloaded from the OneDrive server into my local download folder, and that is where the edited version ends up.

How can I set it up so the edit is reflected in the original file?

T I A, Jan Didden


Answers:
author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Jan Didden](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3916417) Hmmm interesting, have you tried just copying a link to the file and then pasting that onto the Trello card? That should open the file in a new window. I think there must be something funky with how OneDrive files are being attached such that they're forcing a download rather than opening the files for editing in-browser the way that Google Drive does.

comments: author: Jan Didden
body: Hi Iain,

I found one other thing: there is a OneDrive setting for either 'Opening in client application' or 'Opening in browser' (it is in Library settings\|Advanced). I set that to 'Opening in client app' (default is 'Opening in browser')

With that, M$ Office documents when attached to a Trello card can be edited right at the card, and the edits are reflected in the original file in OneDrive. So that is progress.

This does not work for non-Office documents however. I even tried running Trello from my PC (not in a browser), and attaching a file that is also kept on my PC by OneDrive, but still the file is downloaded to the Download folder, opened with its app, and saved in ... the download folder. So xenophobic!

This is a big issue for me, I have several CAD files I need to keep track of, and have been looking at several apps but they all have this deficiency, even M$ Plan. Am I expecting something that is too difficult?

Jan Didden


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Jan Didden](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3916417) yes unless you have a web application that edits CAD files there's not going to be any way of opening and editing them on the card.

If you want to edit CAD files and have the changes synched to the cloud, one option would be to add a link to the Trello card, then use whatever the OneDrive equivalent of Google Drive's Backup and Synch or the Dropbox desktop app to keep a local copy.

I know Google Chrome has an extension that will launch local Drive files from the web but not sure if something similar exists for OneDrive.


author: Jan Didden
body: OneDrive can be set to keep a local copy of any file or folder, which is auto-synched when changed, and I used that. If you launch a local app for a file from OneDrive that is not locally available, OneDrive downloads it. After you edit it, the changed file is synched with the cloud copy.

Maybe if there was a way that the Trello launcher was aware of the client that is linked to a specific file extension, it could work. I think Trello cannot but download the file and let the OS figure out which app to launch. With Office docs that may be build-in?


Tags: attachment