7 Comments

With the disclaimer that I'm brand new (2 day) to being a Substack content creator.

I tried your method and it doesn't work. Tried it earlier with an old Excel file (*.XLS) renamed to *.XLSX and it didn't work either. I suspect there is a file type verification before it accepts an upload. As a workaround, as others have mentioned, I use an existing Google Drive.

Comment: I don't see why Substack should get in the business of hosting files. There are already plenty of options for that and all that is required is a URL in the documents we create on Substack.

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I had a strange, but workable, workaround. My Substack, _Tales of Penumaria_ is a D&D campaign setting worldbuilding blog, and every now and then I have a lot of material related to the topic of the article in question, with plenty of maps, tables, stat blocks, and what not. I can easily format what I need in Microsoft Word, and I even have a template for it. But how can I connect the PDF to the article and still have the article at a reasonable size?

My Answer: Export the PDFs to a space in my 1 TB OneDrive and link from there.

Might not be perfect, but it works the best for me at this moment, and I can always find a better way later.

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I've done basically the same thing with a file on my Google Drive and a link in a custom button. The method here just didn't work for me.

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Do you think SubStack will eventually give us a dedicated storage space for these attachments? What I mean is, what if I, for some reason, want to add the same attachment to a different post? As of right now, I don't know where these attached files live and so I would have to re-upload it from my computer - I think. But that means there are now two copies of the same file somewhere inside my SubStack account. It would be better to have some sort of directory, wouldn't it?

(The huge caveat here is that maybe there is some kind of storage framework and I just haven't found it yet!)

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A dedicated storage space seems like a good idea to me. Who knows what Substack thinks? Last week Substack was slow for four hours due to "ongoing issues" with their content delivery network provider. Maybe if they upgrade their CDN service, they'll allow new file type attachments and embeds and offer dedicated storage.

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I've been hoping for the ability to create one or two static pages (something other than the About and People pages) for a while. In my idea version of SubStack, I would be able to upload files on my dashboard and make them publicly (or to subscribers only) on a dedicated page. Not sure that has any chance of happening, but I can dream.

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I imagine Substack will want to standardize some aspects of newsletters for a while. But I know some publishers are keen on various kinds of customization. I feel that, ideally, a publisher could add pages with custom titles and content, or not if they don't want to. Moreover they could put some or all of the additional pages behind a subscription paywall if they prefer.

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