Disable attachments in SharePoint list

In this SharePoint tutorial, we will discuss how to disable attachments in SharePoint list. Also, we will check how exactly attachments get stored in a SharePoint list, how to enable or disable attachments in SharePoint list.

The same process you can follow to disable attachments in list in SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, and SharePoint 2019.

How to disable attachments in SharePoint list? Open the SharePoint list, then go to the list settings page. Then go to the Advanced Settings page and then go to the Attachments section and choose the Disabled radio button and then click on OK.

Let us check in details.

What are SharePoint List?

In SharePoint, we use lists to store, organize, and securely share information with other team members. Like we can create lists to store Employee Information, Product Details, Issues Details etc.

I have written a complete article on the SharePoint list and I have also uploaded a video on the SharePoint list on YouTube channel.

Attach file to SharePoint Online list item

Now, let us see how to attach file to a SharePoint Online list item. We will see how to add an attachment to a SharePoint list item in both the classic list and a modern list (Check out a few SharePoint modern list features).

Open a modern SharePoint list, click on the + New to add a new item to a SharePoint list.

Then click on the Attachments link to add attachments to a SharePoint list item like below:

Then click on the Save button to save the item with attachments.

Note: You can add multiple attachments to a SharePoint Online list items easily

Once the list item got saved, you can click on the item to see all the SharePoint list item attachments.

Similarly, in a classic SharePoint list, You can click on + new item and then it will open the Add New Item page.

There click on the Attach File button from the SharePoint list ribbon.

Then it will open the browse option where you can Choose File to attach to the SharePoint list item. It will allow only one file at a time.

Click on OK and the file will be attached to the SharePoint Online list item.

Read How to remove commas from number columns in SharePoint List

How exactly SharePoint list item attachments get stored

Now, let us try to understand how exactly SharePoint list item attachments get stored in SharePoint.

First, let us copy the SharePoint list attachments URLs:

https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/SPGuides/Lists/Employees/Attachments/25/Attachment-1.docx?web=1

https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/SPGuides/Lists/Employees/Attachments/25/Attachment-2.docx?web=1

Here, you can see within Employees, SharePoint will create a folder as Attachments and within that, it will create a subfolder as 25.

Here, 25 is the SharePoint list item id.

So for each item, it will create a subfolder with the name as list item id. If the item id is 10, it will create a subfolder as 10 within the Attachments folder.

https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/SPGuides/Lists/<List Name>/<Attachments>/<Folder with name as Item ID>/your attachments

So if you will try to add another file with the same name for a particular item, it will give an error as A file with the name already exists.

Disable attachments in SharePoint list

Now, let us see how to enable or disable attachments in SharePoint list. We will see here how to enable or disable attachments in SharePoint Online list.

Step-1:

Open the SharePoint Online list, go to the list settings page. Click on the Gear icon and then click on List settings in the modern site. And If you are using a classic list, from the list click on LIST -> List Settings.

Step-2:

Then from General Settings click on Advanced settings.

Step-3:

Then in the Advanced Settings page, go to the Attachments section. Then select Disabled the radio button to disable SharePoint list attachment option.

Then click on OK. Once you click on OK, it will show a confirmation message like:

Disabling attachments and saving this settings page will result in the deletion of all attachments. Are you sure you want to disable attachments?

Note: Once you click on OK, all the SharePoint list attachments will get deleted.

Now, when you open the SharePoint list and try to add an item by clicking on New then you will not see the attachment control.

This is how we can disable attachments in SharePoint list.

Enable attachments in SharePoint list

Anytime if you want to enable attachments in SharePoint Online list, in the SharePoint list advanced settings page, go to the Attachments section and select the Enabled radio button like below. You can also optionally select the Add attachments column to default view, if you want the attachment column to appear in the default list view.

This is how we can enable attachments in SharePoint list.

You may like the following SharePoint list tutorials:

• Create SharePoint Online List Programmatically using PnP CSOM
• Open SharePoint list in excel + Update excel from SharePoint list automatically
• SharePoint Create Folder in List or Document Library
• PowerApps: Submit data to two SharePoint Lists
• Microsoft flow Send an email showing wrong time for SharePoint list column
• How to create a list from excel in SharePoint Online
• How to check if a list exists in SharePoint Online site using PNP PowerShell
• Remove all items from a SharePoint Online list using PnP PowerShell
• Save list as template in SharePoint Online using PowerShell
• How to create a list from existing list in SharePoint Online
• How to use List Screen in PowerApps

In this SharePoint tutorial, we learned:

• What is a SharePoint Online list?
• How exactly SharePoint list item attachments get stored?
• How to disable attachments in SharePoint list
• How to enable attachments in SharePoint list