Images disappearing on published articles

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Maura
Tera Expert

‎06-14-2022 10:18 AM

We've been having an issue recently where an article with images will be published and then we'll get feedback that the images are missing and when I go back to the article it's the alt text visibile. Is there something I should be doing to make sure this doesn't happen? These are longer articles with lots of images, could that be a factor?

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TristelleKervel
Giga Expert

‎06-15-2022 01:46 AM - edited ‎03-24-2023 07:22 AM

Hi Maura,

In my experience there are two main causes for this issue:

  1. The image was copied from an article that was subsequently retired (hence the image is no longer available according to ServiceNow) which is roughly what Andreas Allen explains in his reply above.

  2. The link to the image is corrupted because a "/" was automatically added at the beginning of the path.
    • Example: "<img src="/sys_attachment.do?..."
    • Correct syntax: "<img src="sys_attachment.do?..."

The best way to avoid this kind of issue is to import the image into the article instead of copy/pasting it. But if you really prefer copy/pasting, make sure you're not copying directly from another article, and check your source code as I explained above.

Not saying this will fix your problem as our knowledge base may be set up differently from yours, but I guess it's worth a try :).

Hope this helps

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mbernste
Tera Contributor
In response to Paul Ciarfella

‎02-21-2025 09:58 AM - edited ‎02-21-2025 09:58 AM

That's exactly what you have to do.  What it appears is that the image retains the sys_id from where you copied it.  So, if the article that it was in is either retired or doesn't have the same visibility rules as the new article, it will be visible to you (because of your permissions) but not necessarily for others.  I discovered this the hard way when I copied hundreds of articles from L1 to self-help.  The only solution that I found was the one Paul did.

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Tom_T
Tera Contributor
In response to mbernste

‎02-24-2025 02:50 AM

Which I think is a bug in ServcieNow attachment handling. If you copy the image to another picture there needs to be a new reference from the new article to the sys_attachment ID. I do understand the rason to have the image only once in the database to save storage. But if it is in 2 articles there need to be 2 references and both should be working. 
The sys_attachment ID shown is the link to the article (in this case the old one) and not to the image itself, which is or should still be in the database.

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