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Must know
  • Attaching and downloading files needs the Edit Settings permission. Staff without it see no paperclip or drop area.
  • There is no per-message file limit, but each format has a size cap: CSV and TSV 40 MB, Excel 25 MB, PDF, Word and text 8 MB, images 7 MB.
  • Starting a new chat, switching chats or reloading the page clears the attached files. Attach the originals again. Files Hero saved earlier in a chat stay with that chat for Hero to keep using.
Accepted types. PDF, images (PNG, JPG, GIF, WEBP), CSV, TSV, TXT, MD, HTML, Excel (XLSX, XLS) and Word (DOCX). Hero cannot read older .doc files, so save them as .docx. Where to attach. Use the docked Hero panel, the full-page view or the mobile panel, not the Ask Hero card on the Home page.

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Attaching a file

1

Add the file

Click the paperclip icon in the message box, or drag files onto the panel and drop them where “Drop your files for Hero to read” appears.
2

Wait for the upload

The message box is disabled during upload. Then a centered line in the chat reads “Added [file name]” or “Added 3 files”.
3

Ask Hero

Hero says what it makes of the files. Then ask your question.
If a file is refused. An unsupported type is skipped with a message such as “2 files skipped - unsupported type.” A file over its size cap is refused with a message naming the file, its size, the limit and a fix. If nothing uploads, the chat line reads, for example, “2 files not accepted”.

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Reading vs. calculating

Reading. For a long text, spreadsheet or Word file, Hero reads the start of the file, says so and offers to read a specific page, section or sheet. For a very large CSV or TSV, ask Hero to calculate instead, or export a smaller file. Calculating. For anything that must be exact (counts, sums, duplicates, clean-ups, joining two files), ask Hero to calculate. It runs code on the files you attach, with no view of your club’s records, so attach every file the task needs. Hero reports only what its code produced. Good to know.
  • When a chat has many attached files, Hero looks at only the most recently attached ones each time it replies.
  • For a dense grid in a PDF or image, attach a CSV or Excel export of the same data if you have one. Dense grids can be misread.
  • Hero describes children’s personal details only in aggregate.

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Downloading what Hero produces

When Hero’s code creates a file, such as a cleaned CSV, a link with a download icon and the file name appears at the bottom of its reply. The file downloads under its original name. The link stays in the reply only while the chat is open, so download the file before you reload the page or switch chats. Hero can prepare a cleaned file for import, but only Uplifter can confirm the import. Related: Can Hero prepare an import for my club? · How is Ask Hero usage billed, and where do I see it? · How do I start a new chat or return to a past one?