How to View and Zoom Pictures and PDFs in Attachments
Photos and PDFs attached to a call or a customer open on ABM Service's attachment viewer. A picture opens whole, fitted into the window, and you can zoom in on any part of it. A PDF opens in your browser's own PDF viewer. In the Attachments section itself, the Thumbnails view shows the files as pictures.
How do I zoom in on a picture attachment?
Open the picture from its details panel with Open, then use the zoom buttons at the top right of the attachment viewer, beside Download. The picture first opens fitted: the whole of it in the window, never cropped.
- Zoom in (the plus button) makes it larger, a step at a time.
- Zoom out (the minus button) makes it smaller.
- The percentage between them is the size you are looking at, where 100% is the picture's own size.
- Fit shows the whole picture in the window again. It is highlighted while the picture is fitted, and a fitted picture stays fitted when you resize the window.
- 1:1 shows the picture at its actual size, 100%.
A picture can go from a tenth of its size (less, if that is what it takes to fit a very large picture in the window) up to five times its size. When a button can go no further, pointing at it says so: "This is as large as the picture goes" or "This is as small as the picture goes".
Fit never makes a small picture larger than its own size, so a small image is not blown up and blurred to fill a big window.
Can I zoom a picture with the keyboard or the mouse wheel?
Yes. On the attachment viewer, with a picture showing:
- Press the plus key (+) to zoom in, the minus key (-) to zoom out, and zero (0) to fit the whole picture in the window again. Do not hold Ctrl, which zooms the whole page instead.
- Hold Ctrl and turn the mouse wheel to zoom towards the point under the pointer, so the detail you are pointing at stays where it is. A touchpad's pinch does the same.
When the picture is larger than the window, it scrolls both ways: use the scroll bars or the mouse wheel, or press the left mouse button on the picture and drag it about. After selecting the picture, the arrow keys scroll it too.
How do I read a PDF attachment?
Select the PDF in the Attachments section, then Open in its details panel. The PDF opens on the attachment viewer, inside your browser's own PDF viewer, with that viewer's own page controls and zoom. In the ABM Service desktop app it is the same PDF viewer, built into the app.
ABM Service's own zoom buttons are for pictures only and do not appear for a PDF. To read the PDF in another program, such as Adobe Acrobat, select Download and open the saved copy.
Why do some attachments show a picture and others only an icon?
A file shows a small picture of itself only if one was made when it was attached:
- Files attached in ABM Service get a picture when they are uploaded: a photo shows itself, and a PDF shows its first page. Picture formats your browser cannot read, such as HEIC or TIFF, and a picture that takes more than three seconds to make, get none.
- Files that were already there, attached by older ABM programs, the scanner or the engineers' phones, keep exactly what they had: many photos already have a picture, and PDFs usually do not. ABM Service never goes back and makes pictures for them.
A file with no picture shows the icon for its type, with the type written on it, such as PDF or MSG. The picture is only a preview: opening the file always shows the whole file.
How do I see all the pictures at a glance?
Select Thumbnails beside View at the top right of the Attachments section. The files are shown as tiles: each with its picture or type icon, its name and its comment, in groups with a heading and a count when the section is grouped.
- Select a tile to mark it and open its details panel.
- Double-click a tile to open the file.
- Use the arrow keys to move from tile to tile.
In Thumbnails the files are always newest first within each group. Your choice of view is remembered for you, so the section opens on Thumbnails next time too.
What if a picture attachment cannot be shown?
If the attachment viewer says This picture cannot be shown, "The file may be damaged. Use Download to save a copy and open it on your computer.", the file could not be drawn as a picture. Select Download at the top right of the viewer and open the copy with a program on your computer.
If a picture in the list shows its type icon instead of the picture you expected, the file has no picture of its own, or the picture could not be loaded. The file itself is not affected: select Open to see it.