Some events need a document, not an answer. A trek needs a medical declaration, a workshop needs proof of student status, a venue with an age limit needs an ID. A registration field of type File collects one as part of buying a ticket.
What an attendee can send
The file's contents decide whether it is accepted, not its name. Renaming a spreadsheet to
declaration.pdf does not get it through, and neither does a photo named .pdf — the attendee is
asked to send the real thing. This is the same check that guards your logo and banner uploads.
What happens to the file
The file is uploaded when the attendee presses the button to pay, not when they pick it. If they change their mind and pick a different file first, only the last one is sent.
Uploaded files are private. Unlike your logo or event banner, which are published on your event page, an attendee's file is stored so that only you can open it. There is no public link to it — not even an unguessable one. When you open it from an order, the link is created at that moment and stops working a few minutes later, so a link copied out of your browser history is not a way for anyone else to reach the file.
Reading what you collected
Open any paid order from Orders and the answers appear alongside the tickets. Per-order questions are listed once; per-ticket questions appear under the ticket they belong to, so a four-seat booking shows four sets.
A file answer shows the attendee's own filename and its size, as a link. Clicking it opens the file.
Answers are shown exactly as the attendee saw the form when they booked — the labels, the order, and the questions themselves. Renaming a question, reordering it, or retiring it later does not change what an old order shows. That is deliberate: a record of what somebody agreed to is only worth keeping if it cannot quietly change afterwards.
If a question was retired after an order was placed, it is still listed, marked as retired. An answer that no longer matches any question on the form is also shown, marked — nothing is dropped silently.
When a ticket is passed on
If a File question is asked per ticket, whoever receives a transferred ticket answers it again themselves, and their file replaces the original holder's.
That is on purpose rather than an oversight. A t-shirt size belonging to someone who is not coming is merely wrong; an ID or a medical form belonging to them is worse than useless at the door. See Learn more about transferring a ticket to someone else.
If uploads are not switched on
File storage is optional, and a deployment can run without it. Where it is not configured, an event that asks for a file cannot sell tickets — checkout says so rather than showing a picker that would fail.
If you see that message, either remove the File question from the event or ask whoever runs your deployment to configure storage. Every other question type is unaffected.
What this cannot do yet
Registration questions are created through the API rather than a screen in the dashboard, so adding a File question is not something you can do yourself from Events today. Everything on this page describes what happens once one exists.
Attendee files are also kept for as long as the event's records are — there is no automatic deletion after the event, and no bulk download of every file on an event. Both are worth asking for if you need them.