File Attachments

About file attachments

File attachments may be added to different places in a course, for example, to an Item, an Assignment, or a File in a Learning Unit. There are two options for adding file attachments:

Users will open the file by clicking a link to the file that appears in the course. After selecting a file to attach, users may enter a name for the link to the file. This name will appear to users, instead of the name of the document. For example, users would see “Biology Syllabus” instead of syllabus_bio_101.doc.

Accepted characters in file names

The characters a-z, 0-9, period ‘.’ and underscore ‘_’ are acceptable in file names. Any ISO-8859-1 character (also referred to as Latin 1) may be used in a file name. Characters that are not ISO-8859-1are not supported.

Recognized content attachments

The following file types are recognized by the Blackboard Learning System. These files can be displayed within a content item.

 

Note: The Blackboard Learning System can recognize additional file types and associated applications if a MIME extension is added. Contact your System Administrator for more information about adding MIME extensions.

 

Extension

File Type

Programs associated with the File Type

.aam

Multimedia

Macromedia® Authorware® plug-in

Note that the .aam file is the starting point for a series of files that must be enclosed in a .ZIP file.

.aiff

Audio

Audio program

.asf

Multimedia

Microsoft® .NET™ Show

.au

Audio

Real Audio Player™

.avi

Video

Video player (not Macintosh® compatible)

.doc

Text

Microsoft® Word® or other word processor

.exe

Executable

Executable file

.gif

Image

Graphics program or Web browser

.html, .htm

Web page

HTML editor or Web browser

.jpg, .jpeg

Image

Graphics program or Web browser

.jif

Image

Graphics program or Web browser

.mp3

Audio

Audio program

.mpe

Audio/Video

Audio program

.mpg, .mpeg

Image

Graphics program or Web browser

.moov,movie

Movie

QuickTime® movie

 

.mov

Video

Movie or media player

.pdf

Text

Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®

.png

Image

Portable Network Graphics

.ppt, .pps

Slide show

Microsoft® PowerPoint® and PowerPoint Player®

.qt

Movie

QuickTime®

.ra

Audio

Real Audio Player™

.ram

Video

Real Audio Movie™

.rm

Audio

Audio program

.rtf

Text

Rich Text Format

.swf

Multimedia

Macromedia® Shockwave® plug-in

.tiff, .tif

Image

Graphics program or Web browser

.txt

Text

Text or HTML editor, word processor

.wav

Audio

Audio program

.wma

Audio

Audio program

.wmf

Graphic

Microsoft® Windows®

.wmv

Media/Audio

Microsoft® Windows®

.wpd

Text

WordPerfect® or other word processor

.xls

Spreadsheet

Microsoft® Excel®

.zip

Text

WinZip®