# Editing a Markdown document deletes and re-adds its Jira attachment

**What you are seeing**

An edited document lost its old attachment id, and the issue history shows an attachment deleted and re-added.

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## Why it happens

Editing works by deleting the existing .md attachment and uploading a replacement. There is no in-place update.

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## What to do

Expect this. It is how the app saves. Do not build links against a specific attachment id, and warn watchers that edits produce attachment events.

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## Settings involved

| **Setting**               | **Where**    | **What it does**                                                                           |
| ------------------------- | ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| View / Edit (editor mode) | Editor modal | Only **Save** in edit mode replaces the attachment. Viewing a document changes nothing.    |
| Title                     | Editor modal | Becomes the new attachment's filename, so changing it saves the document under a new name. |

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## Limits that apply here

| **Limit**                | **Value**                  | **What happens**                                                                                                                                               |
| ------------------------ | -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Document title length    | 50 characters              | Enforced by the Title input in the editor. The title becomes the attachment filename.                                                                          |
| Large document preview   | About 1,000,000 characters | Read-only previews longer than this switch to a virtualised viewer that renders in chunks as you scroll, so browser find-in-page and similar behaviour differ. |
| Simultaneous image loads | 20                         | At most 20 image URLs are resolved at once, so image-heavy documents load in waves.                                                                            |

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## A few things that catch people out

* Editing is destructive to Jira's attachment record: the old .md attachment is deleted and a replacement uploaded, so the attachment id, upload date and author all change, watchers see delete-then-add events, and links to the old attachment id break.
* If the delete succeeds but the re-upload fails, the document is lost and no error is shown.
* Nothing prevents two documents on the same issue having the same title, and renaming makes the old filename disappear.

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## Related

### [Document disappeared after saving an edit, with no error shown](https://help.gocapable.com/jira-markdown/document-disappeared-after-saving-an-edit-with-no-error-shown.html)

When a save deletes the old file but the new one never arrives.

### [Renaming a document made the old one disappear, or two tabs now share the same name](https://help.gocapable.com/jira-markdown/renaming-a-document-made-the-old-one-disappear-or-two-tabs-now-share-the-same-name.html)

The title is the filename, so renaming saves a new file.

### [Everything else](https://help.gocapable.com/jira-markdown/everything-else.html)

The rest of this family.

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