--- title: Files description: The Files page browses the files your Organization has stored, organized into folders, with download and an in-place chart preview for CSV exports written by pipelines. source: https://documentation.controlcomtech.com/platform/files --- # Files Files is the browser for the objects your Organization has stored outside the time-series database: CSV exports written by pipelines, uploaded utility bills, and anything else the platform has put away on your behalf. Open a folder, find the file, download it or chart it in place. > **Workflow Stage: Store** ## Overview Open **Data → Files** in the sidebar, next to Explorer. The screen is two resizable panels: a folder tree on the left under the heading **Folders**, and the files inside the selected folder on the right. The page is read-only. There is no upload button, no delete, and no way to create or rename a folder here. Everything listed was written by something else in the platform, and the two things you can do with a file are download it and, when it is a CSV, chart it without leaving the page. ![The Files page in ControlCom Connect with the folder tree on the left and the files in the selected folder on the right](https://documentation.controlcomtech.com/images/small-areas/02-files-list.png) *Files: folders on the left, the contents of the selected folder on the right* Every authenticated member of the Organization can reach the page. Unlike Dashboards or Alarms it carries no permission of its own, so files are visible to anyone who can sign in to the Organization. Bear that in mind when a pipeline is deciding what to write. ## Where Files Come From Nothing arrives here by hand. The two producers worth knowing about are pipelines and energy management. A pipeline with a **Store File** action writes its output here, and the folder the file lands in is the directory that the pipeline itself specifies. That is why the folder tree tends to read like a list of jobs rather than a filing system: it mirrors how your pipelines were set up. If you want a tidier tree, change the directories your pipelines write to. Utility bills uploaded through Energy Management are stored the same way and appear under their own folder. Not everything the platform stores shows up here. Logos, images and JCAHO report uploads are kept separately and are managed on the screens that own them. ## Browsing Folders The **Folders** panel is a tree. Each row shows a folder name and, on the right, the number of files it holds, counted through its subfolders as well as its own, so a parent tells you the size of the whole branch at a glance. Click a folder to select it and load its contents. A folder with children expands when you select it, and the chevron on the left collapses it again. The tree is keyboard navigable: `Enter` or `Space` selects, `Right Arrow` expands, `Left Arrow` collapses. If an Organization has no stored files at all, the panel reads **No folders** and there is nothing to select. ## The File List Selecting a folder fills the right panel. Until you do, the list shows **No Files** with the prompt **Select a folder to view its files.**, and a folder that is genuinely empty reads **No files in this folder.** instead. The list shows two columns: **Name**, with an icon that distinguishes CSVs from other file types, and **Created**, the date and time the file was stored. Newest first. Twenty rows to a page, adjustable from **Rows per page** at the bottom, where the counter reports which slice of the total you are looking at. The search box above the list filters the current folder by file name and is not a search across the whole Organization: pick the folder first, then search inside it. Press `/` anywhere on the page to jump into it, and `Escape` to clear it. Three icon buttons sit at the top right of the list. **Columns** hides the Created column when you only want names, **Density** switches between Comfortable and Compact rows, and **Export** writes the list itself (name, created date and file type) out as CSV or JSON. Export gives you the inventory, not the files. Hovering a row reveals its actions. **Download** fetches the file through the platform, so it works the same way for everyone with access and needs no separate storage credentials. **View chart** appears only on `.csv` files. ## Charting a CSV **View chart** opens the file in a dialog rather than downloading it, which is the quicker way to answer "did this export capture what I expected" before pulling the file into a spreadsheet. The dialog reads the CSV as a time series: a line chart across the top with a legend, a zoom slider and the usual chart toolbox, and the parsed rows underneath as a table with a **Timestamp** column and one column per series. Column headers sort ascending, then descending, then back to the file's own order. Numeric values are shown to three decimal places, and a gap in the data reads as `-`. The preview only handles CSV, and only files it can find a chartable time column in. A file with no usable series reports **No chartable data in this file.** rather than an empty chart. ## Related Workflow Stages Files sits at the far end of the Store stage. Readings that were Connected and Collected are stored as time series and queried through the Data Explorer ([Data Explorer](https://documentation.controlcomtech.com/platform/explorer)); anything a pipeline turns into a document lands here instead. Because the folder structure is decided by whatever wrote the file, the useful upstream reference is the pipeline configuration itself. Downstream, a stored CSV is usually on its way into a report or an outside system, which is the Report and Integrate territory covered by [Reports](https://documentation.controlcomtech.com/platform/reports) and the [API reference](https://documentation.controlcomtech.com/api-reference).