# Files and scans

> Attach files to cards and notes, scan paper into a searchable PDF, find a picture or a file by a word inside it, and how much storage each plan holds.

A file in The Margin always belongs to something: a card, a note, a
whiteboard, a chat, a receipt on an expense. It is kept at its original
quality, with no recompression, and it goes wherever the thing it is attached
to goes.

## Attach a file to a card

Open the card and find **Attachments**. **Attach file** takes
any kind of file up to 25 MB. Pictures show a small preview; everything else
shows its name and size. Each row has a download button and a delete button.

Two more buttons appear on the right kind of file:

- On a picture, **Annotate in a whiteboard** opens a new
  whiteboard with the picture already on it, so you can draw arrows and
  circles over a screenshot or a floor plan. See
  [Whiteboards and canvases](https://themarginapp.com/docs/whiteboards-and-canvases).
- On a sound file, **Transcribe to a note** writes what was
  said into a note in your Inbox, filed against the card. See
  [Talking instead of typing](https://themarginapp.com/docs/voice).

When a card has two or more pictures, the oldest and the newest sit side by
side under **Before / After**, which is how a design request and the
finished work end up next to each other.

Anyone who can edit the card can attach and delete. Someone with a view-only
share can view and download them.

> **On the phone:** On the phone, a card's Attachments has a button that takes a picture:
> **Take a photo** or **Choose a photo** from your library. Swipe a file to the
> left to remove it.

## Pictures in a note

Paste a screenshot into a note, drag a picture onto it, or type `/`
and pick the image entry. The picture is stored as an attachment on the note
and linked into the markdown at the cursor, so the note stays plain markdown
and the link does not go stale. See [Notes](https://themarginapp.com/docs/notes).

Files also arrive on their own: an email sent to your capture address brings
its PDFs, pictures and office files into the Inbox with it, and a picture
shared from another app on your phone lands there too. See
[The Inbox](https://themarginapp.com/docs/notes#the-inbox).

## Scan paper into a PDF

**Scanning a letter or a form**

1. Open quick capture (`⌘ ⇧ K`) and press the scan icon beside the
   microphone, **Scan a document**. On the phone, tap **Scan a document** under
   Capture's title.
2. Take a photo of the first page, flat and in good light. Keep taking the
   next page until you have them all. Remove any page that came out badly.
3. Press **Save as a PDF**.

The pages become one PDF, in the order you took them, saved in your Inbox
as a capture called "Scan" and the day's date. From there you file it like any
other capture: keep it as a note, put it on a card, or add it to a note you
already have.

A scan holds up to 20 pages. Each page is a JPEG or PNG photo of up to 8 MB,
and the finished PDF has to fit the 25 MB file limit. On the phone you can
also pick a page you already photographed with **Choose a photo**.

> **Known limit: Scanning needs a connection** The PDF is made and stored on our server, so a scan waits for signal. The
> camera works offline; saving does not.

## Find a picture or a file by a word in it

On Pro, Family and Team, The Margin reads the words in every picture and PDF
attached to a note, a card or a whiteboard, scans included. A school letter, a
prescription, a photo of the whiteboard after a meeting: once it is read, you
can find it by any word in it.

- **Search.** Type the word in the command panel (`⌘ K`) or on the
  phone's search. Files whose words match show under **Words in files**, with a
  line of the matching text, and open on the note, card or whiteboard they
  belong to.
- **The Mind.** What a file says is remembered beside its name, so
  [the Mind](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-mind) and Margin Intelligence can find it when you ask
  about the thing it mentions.
- **Outside The Margin.** A scan's PDF gets its words written into it as an
  invisible layer. Download it and any PDF viewer can search it and copy text
  from it.

Reading happens a moment after the upload, so the file is there at once and
its words follow. It reads JPEG, PNG, WebP and GIF pictures and PDFs up to
8 MB. Pictures in chat and receipts on expenses are left out: a chat is a
conversation, and a receipt has its own reader in
[Expenses and money](https://themarginapp.com/docs/expenses-and-money).

Each file read uses a little of your plan's Margin Intelligence allowance.
When the allowance has run out, the file is kept but not read.

> **Note: Sealed things stay sealed** A file attached to a note locked with a PIN, or to anything sealed in your
> Vault, never shows up in search, for you or for the assistant, while it is
> sealed. Search also keeps to the boards you are on: a file on a board you
> cannot open is not found. See [Your data](https://themarginapp.com/docs/your-data).

On Free, a scan is still kept as a PDF and attachments work the same way; the
words inside them are not read.

## How much you can store

Every file counts toward the workspace's storage, whatever it is attached to.

| Plan   | Storage per workspace |
| ------ | --------------------- |
| Free   | 25 MB                 |
| Pro    | 10 GB                 |
| Family | 25 GB                 |
| Team   | 50 GB                 |

A trial gives 2 GB, unless a plan you already pay for gives more. One file can
be up to 25 MB on every plan. When the storage is full, the upload is refused
with a message that says so, and nothing you already stored is touched.
Deleting files frees the space. See [Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits).

## Offline

Uploading a file needs a connection, because files are kept on our server and
not in the database on your device. A file you have opened on a device before
usually opens again there without signal. Everything else about the card or
note works offline as normal. See [Working offline](https://themarginapp.com/docs/working-offline).

> **For agents:** An assistant connected over MCP can list, read, attach and delete files with
> `list_attachments`, `get_attachment`, `upload_attachment` and
> `delete_attachment`. `search_attachment_text` finds a file by a word inside it,
> and `get_attachment` returns the whole text that was read.

**Where to next**

- [Notes](https://themarginapp.com/docs/notes): the Inbox where scans and shared files land
- [Boards and cards](https://themarginapp.com/docs/boards-and-cards): what else a card holds
- [Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits): storage and the AI allowance by plan


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Section: Doing the work. Checked against the running product on October 5, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/files-and-scans. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt