What just happened to attachments in Trello???
Asked by Jason Pearson:

Last week, everything was fine. I clicked an attachment, it opened in the card and I was able to click left or right to navigate to the other attachments. Now every click opens a new tab. This is very distressing to me. Is there a secret setting that got changed that I can revert back to? Please help.


Answers:
author: Sandy Podborny
body: [@Matt Siegmann](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4598050) [@Jason Pearson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4212109)

Looks like they have reinstated the "view in lightbox" feature for attachments in Trello! Hope you are seeing the same...

Thanks Trello!

comments: author: Chris Matsumoto
body: Amazing! Yes it's back! Convenience has greatly improved and we are loving it. Thank you very much Trello!


author: Chris Matsumoto
body: We have also run into the same problem in which I shared my thoughts on a similar thread. I wanted to repost it here, however Atlassian would not allow for my message to be posted.

Here are some of our thoughts on the recent changes Trello made with the preview mode of attachments.

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-questions/How-to-view-Trello-card-attachments-without-opening-a-new-tab/qaq-p/1827474?tempId=eyJvaWRjX2NvbnNlbnRfbGFuZ3VhZ2VfdmVyc2lvbiI6IjIuMCIsIm9pZGNfY29uc2VudF9ncmFudGVkX2F0IjoxNjM1MjI0NDA0MzU4fQ%3D%3D#U1845230>


author: Stephen Deeb
body: [@Jason Pearson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4212109) This is happening to me as well now. I use the Trello desktop app and attachments would open up inside of Trello. Now each one opens up in a separate browser tab. Anyone know how to fix this?


author: Brittany Joiner
body: [@Jason Pearson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4212109) i still have that expected behavior. What browser are you using? (I'm using Chrome and just tried it on Safari and seems to be working correctly for me.) Is it possible you have a chrome extension that could be impact the behavior somehow?

comments: author: Jason Pearson
body: [@Brittany Joiner](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1692248) thanks for being here. I'm not sure what the expected behavior you are referencing is. Do you mean to tell me that you are still able to view attachments in the card without your browser opening a new tab? I am on Windows using Chrome and the app offered on Windows 10 store. I just tried Microsoft Edge and Firefox, both of which opened new tabs when clicking an attachment in card. My work requires lots of .pdf to be added to cards and not being able to click the little left and right arrows to switch between them is a real bummer/ productivity dampener.


author: Brittany Joiner
body: [@Jason Pearson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4212109) expected beahvior = being able to click through the attachments and not automatically downloading them. Most of my attachments are screenshots, and when I just tested with pdfs or excel spreadsheets, it seems to automatically download or open in a new tab. I'm not sure when the change happened but now that I think about it, I think someone else mentioned this as well. I don't know a fix for it unfortunately.


author: Sandy Podborny
body: Happening to me as well, attachment downloads and opens a new window instead of staying inside of Trello. Very annoying and frustrating. I'm on Chrome.


author: Brittany Joiner
body: [@Jason Pearson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4212109) [@Sandy Podborny](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4590194) I asked around if we have some sort of statement from the Trello team on why these changes happened and was shared this - hope this gives more context and explanation for these changes!  

> We recently made some changes to how attachments are secured, largely to make sure they're kept private. Anytime loading an attachment now, checks are made that the person has the board permission to view that attachment, so generally speaking, a good thing. The unintended side effect is that it also made some changes to our preview service, so moving forward, only images and videos will be able to be previewed.
>
> <br />
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> This card from Trello's Platform team has more details on how this works: <https://trello.com/c/tnX5dhiI/87-updated-authenticated-access-to-s3>  
> It may help to upload files via third-party service (i.e. Google Drive) if attachment previews are needed for your use-case.
>
> <br />
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> With all that said, I'll add this ticket on our feedback board for our product team as right now they're aware that previews are no longer available mostly because of a technical limitation. I'm not aware of any plans to change this for the moment but I'll pass the feedback nonetheless!


author: Matt Siegmann
body: This has made using Trello for my company not really worth it. We chose to use it over MS Planner and are now regretting it. I hope this changes back to the way it was before I am asked to switch over all of our boards.


author: Sandy Podborny
body: [@Matt Siegmann](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4598050)

Agreed on that sentiment Matt - viewing PDFs within Trello was the reason the platform was so powerful for my business. This annoying change of downloading (for the sake of "security" per above) has taken Trello out of the game in my opinion.


author: Sandy Podborny
body: Looks like they have reinstated the "view in lightbox" feature for attachments in Trello! Hope you are seeing the same...