Workspace Admins and above can upload supported documents to a workspace individually or by using ZIP files containing multiple documents. This article explains how to upload documents, upload and extract ZIP files, and review the results of a ZIP extraction.
Before You Begin
- Workspace Admins and above can upload documents.
- A maximum of 100 documents can be uploaded at a time.
File names, excluding the extension, can contain up to 100 characters.
File names cannot contain the following characters: " < > | : * ? \ /
Empty files cannot be uploaded.
If a file with the same name already exists in the workspace, or the same file name appears more than once in the upload, the file must be renamed before the upload can continue.
- An individual document cannot exceed 50 MB.
- Txt files are limited to 10 MB.
- Blackout only supports specific file types. For a complete list, refer to the Supported File Types.
- ZIP files have separate size and processing requirements, outlined in the Uploading ZIP Files section below.
How to Upload Documents
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After navigating to a workspace, click the Upload Document button in the top-right corner. An upload menu will appear.
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Drag and drop your files from your file explorer, or click Select Documents to open your file explorer and choose the files to upload.
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The selected files will populate a list, showing their file names and sizes. This will allow you to confirm the files before finalizing the upload. If a file needs to be deleted from the upload list, click the
icon to the right of the file name.
- Click Upload Documents. An Uploading Documents message appears while the upload is in progress. When the upload is complete, a Document upload successful message appears.
If a file cannot be uploaded, the upload window remains open and displays the reason next to the affected file.
Note: A document may upload successfully but still be unable to open in the document viewer if Blackout cannot process the file. If this occurs, Blackout displays an error when the document is opened.
Your documents are now ready for review!
Uploading Zip Files
Workspace Admins and above can upload ZIP files to a workspace using the same upload process as other supported documents. Blackout will extract the supported documents from the ZIP file and add them to the workspace.
Before You Begin
- ZIP files can be up to 1 GB.
- Files inside the zip are subject to the same file size limits as individual files.
- Only supported file types are extracted and added to the workspace.
The 100-file upload limit does not apply to the number of documents inside a ZIP file. There is no limit on the number of documents that can be extracted from a ZIP file, provided the ZIP and its contents meet the other upload requirements.
- Password-protected ZIP files are not supported.
- ZIP files containing other ZIP files are not supported.
- The folder structure from the ZIP file is not retained in the workspace.
How to Upload a ZIP File
Follow the steps in Uploading Documents to upload a ZIP file. Drag and drop the ZIP file into the upload window, or select it using Select Documents.
After the ZIP file is uploaded, Blackout begins extracting documents in the background. A message appears confirming that the ZIP extraction in progress and you will receive an email when it is complete.
Depending on the size and contents of the ZIP file, documents may take some time to appear in the workspace.
The user who uploaded the ZIP file will receive an email from Blackout when extraction is complete. If the extracted documents do not appear immediately, refresh the document list.
The user who uploaded the ZIP file will receive an email from Blackout when extraction is complete. If the extracted documents do not appear immediately, refresh the document list.
Note: Duplicate file names contained within a ZIP file are renamed automatically. For example, a second file named Document.pdf may be renamed to Document (1).pdf.
ZIP Extraction Errors
If one or more documents cannot be extracted from a ZIP file, Blackout identifies the affected documents and provides the reason for each failure in the email sent to the uploading user.
Unsupported file types will not be added to the workspace. Documents that are successfully extracted are still added to the workspace when other documents in the ZIP fail.
Blackout may also send a different completion email if:
- All documents in the ZIP fail to extract.
- No documents are found in the ZIP.
- ZIP extraction cannot be completed.