[AEM Assets]{class="badge positive" title="Applies to AEM Assets)."}

Manage assets manage-assets

This article describes how to manage and edit assets in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets. Managing assets in AEM Assets covers the full lifecycle of digital content, including uploading, organizing, editing, versioning, and publishing assets from a centralized digital asset management (DAM) repository. To manage Content Fragments, see Content Fragments assets.

Overview of asset management in AEM Assets

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets functions as a centralized digital asset management (DAM) system, storing and organizing digital content so that teams can locate, reuse, and deliver assets consistently across channels. In this context, an asset is any digital file managed within the repository, such as images, videos, documents, audio files, and other media. Content Fragments are a distinct asset type used to author channel-neutral, structured content that can be reused across multiple experiences, and they are managed separately as described in the linked Content Fragments article.

Centralizing assets in a single managed repository reduces duplication, enforces consistent metadata, and streamlines collaboration between content creators, marketers, and reviewers. As widely acknowledged in digital asset management practice, this centralized approach improves discoverability and helps maintain brand consistency because every team works from a single, governed source of truth.

Common asset management tasks

Managing and editing assets in AEM Assets includes the following core activities:

Practical applications and benefits

Effective asset management directly supports faster content production and consistent multichannel delivery. Because assets and their metadata are stored and governed centrally, teams can quickly find approved content, avoid recreating existing files, and ensure the correct, up-to-date versions are used everywhere. This leads to more efficient workflows, stronger brand consistency, and reduced operational overhead across marketing and content teams.

Create folders creating-folders

Folders in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets let you group and organize a collection of related assets — for example, all Nature images — into a single container. Folders help you categorize, structure, and quickly locate your assets, which improves navigation and workflow efficiency as your asset library grows. Experience Manager Assets does not require you to organize assets in folders to function correctly, so folder organization remains an optional convenience rather than a mandatory step.

Steps to create a folder

Unsupported characters in file and folder names

The following (space-separated list of) characters are not supported:

Upload assets uploading-assets

Uploading assets brings your digital assets—images, videos, documents, audio files, and other rich media—into Experience Manager, where they are centrally stored, organized, and made available for reuse across your web pages, campaigns, and channels. Once uploaded, Experience Manager processes each file and generates the metadata and renditions needed to manage, search, and deliver the asset efficiently.

For the complete step-by-step procedure, see add digital assets to Experience Manager.

Why upload assets to Experience Manager

Uploading centralizes your media in a single, governed repository rather than leaving files scattered across local drives or disconnected folders. This delivers several practical benefits:

Because uploaded assets become the source of truth for your media, keeping them well-organized from the moment of upload directly improves downstream authoring, search, and delivery.

Extract ZIP archives extract-zip-archives

Select ZIP archives that are managed in Experience Manager and extract their contents directly within Experience Manager, without first downloading the compressed files to a local system. Extracting archives in place avoids the overhead of downloading, unpacking, and re-uploading files, which streamlines asset ingestion and keeps large ZIP contents inside the managed repository.

To extract the ZIP files, perform the following steps:

Preview assets previewing-assets

To preview an asset in the Assets user interface, complete the following steps in order:

Zoom controls for previewing images zoom-controls

Preview mode gives you precise control over how closely you inspect an asset:

Select Reset to reset the view to the original size.

Edit properties editing-properties

Copy assets copying-assets

Copying an asset or a folder in Experience Manager duplicates the entire asset or folder, along with its complete content structure, at the target location. The copied asset or folder becomes a full duplicate, while the original asset at the source location remains unaltered — making the copy operation a non-destructive action that safely preserves the source.

A few attributes that are unique to each individual copy of an asset are not carried forward. Examples include:

All other properties and metadata information are fully retained in the copy. Experience Manager creates a complete duplicate, not a partial copy, when copying an asset.

Move or rename assets moving-or-renaming-assets

Manage renditions managing-renditions

Renditions are the alternate versions of an asset—such as different sizes or formats generated during asset processing—that Adobe Experience Manager Assets stores alongside the original. You can add or remove renditions for an asset, except the original, directly from the asset’s details page.

Delete assets delete-assets

To resolve or remove incoming references from other pages, update the relevant references before deleting an asset. This step is essential because deleting an asset that other pages still reference leaves broken links across those pages.

Also, disable the force delete button using an overlay. This prevents users from deleting referenced assets, and as a result, it protects your content from broken links and ensures reference integrity is maintained before any deletion occurs.

Asynchronous Background Jobs asynchronous-background-jobs

To improve performance and reliability when processing large numbers of assets, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) uses asynchronous background jobs for certain asset management operations. Instead of completing these operations immediately, AEM processes them in the background and allows users to continue working while progress is tracked separately. This approach keeps the user interface responsive and prevents long-running operations from blocking other work.

When Jobs Run Asynchronously

Folder operations affecting more than 150 assets — including moving, copying, or deleting — are automatically executed as asynchronous jobs. When starting one of these operations, users can choose to run the job immediately or schedule it for a later time. Scheduling allows large operations to be deferred to off-peak periods, reducing contention on system resources.

How AEM Processes the Job

As the operation runs, AEM processes assets in batches and periodically saves progress. Batch processing with periodic checkpoints ensures that progress is preserved and the operation can recover reliably rather than restarting from the beginning. The AEM user interface displays progress updates so that users can monitor the status of the operation in real time.

For move and delete operations, AEM restricts access to the affected folders while the job runs. This restriction exists to prevent conflicting actions, because concurrent edits during a batch operation could corrupt the job state or produce inconsistent results.

Tracking Job Progress

To track job progress, open the Assets Jobs console (Assets > Jobs within the Admin view). The console displays the current status, percentage completed, and other job information. To view detailed job information:

Users are notified automatically when the operation finishes, so no manual polling is required to confirm completion.

Download assets download-assets

Downloading assets in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) lets you retrieve digital files — such as images, documents, videos, and other rich media — from the centralized asset repository to your local machine or another destination. For complete step-by-step instructions, see download assets from Experience Manager.

The ability to download assets is a core function of digital asset management, ensuring that approved, up-to-date files can be reused across creative, marketing, and publishing workflows. Because Experience Manager serves as a single source of truth for an organization’s media, downloading directly from the repository helps teams work with the correct, latest versions rather than outdated or duplicated copies.

Common reasons to download assets from Experience Manager include:

For the full workflow, including selection options and available formats, refer to the linked guide: download assets from Experience Manager.

Publish or unpublish assets publish-assets

Limitations and Tips for Publishing and Unpublishing Assets

Understand the following limitations and tips related to publishing or unpublishing assets or folders:

Closed user group closed-user-group

A closed user group (CUG) limits access to specific asset folders published from Experience Manager. When you create a CUG for a folder, access to that folder—including its assets and all subfolders—is restricted exclusively to assigned members or groups. Because access is gated, assigned members or groups must log in with their security credentials before the folder becomes available to them.

CUGs provide an additional, layered method for restricting access to your assets, complementing existing permission settings so that sensitive content remains protected even in the publish environment. You can also configure a dedicated login page for the folder.

Configure a closed user group for an asset folder

Search assets search-assets

Searching assets is central to the usage of a digital asset management (DAM) system, because effective discovery of the right asset determines how quickly work moves forward across the organization. Regardless of role, users depend on search to locate, reuse, govern, and maintain the assets that power their workflows.

Search supports several distinct groups of users:

To meet these varied needs, a DAM system provides multiple levels of search capability:

For simple, advanced, and custom searches to discover and use the most appropriate assets, see search assets in Experience Manager.

Quick actions quick-actions

Quick action icons provide fast, context-specific controls for working with an individual asset directly from its thumbnail. These icons are available for a single asset at a time, meaning they surface the actions relevant to one selected item rather than to a group. This single-asset scope keeps the interface focused and ensures that each action applies precisely to the asset in view.

The method used to reveal the quick action icons depends on the input type of your device. Because touch and pointer-based devices interact differently, the display gesture differs accordingly. Perform the following actions to display the quick action icons:

In short, touch devices rely on a press-and-hold gesture, while non-touch devices rely on a pointer hover — both revealing the same set of quick action icons for the targeted asset.

Timeline timeline

The timeline provides a chronological view of asset-related events across four categories for a selected item, letting you track and review everything that has happened to an asset in one place. The timeline surfaces the following event types:

Figure: Sort timeline entries for an asset

Because these events are consolidated into a single chronological view, the timeline serves as a central reference point for collaboration, review, and version tracking.

Annotate assets annotating

Annotations are comments or explanatory notes added directly to images or videos. Annotations enable marketers to collaborate and leave feedback directly on assets, streamlining the review and approval workflow by keeping comments attached to the exact asset—and, for videos, the exact frame—being discussed.

Video annotations are only supported on browsers with HTML5-compatible video formats. The video formats that Assets supports depend on the browser. However, MXF (Material Exchange Format) video format is not yet supported with video annotations.

Specify the desired color in the Annotation Color box and then select Accept.

View saved annotations viewing-saved-annotations

You can view only one annotation at a time.

Follow these steps:

Print annotations printing-annotations

If an asset has annotations or has been subjected to a review workflow, Adobe Experience Manager Assets lets you print the asset together with its annotations and review status as a PDF file for offline review.

You can also choose to print only the annotations or only the review status, depending on what reviewers need to see offline.

To print the annotations and review status, select the Print icon and follow the instructions in the wizard. The Print icon appears in the toolbar only when the asset has at least one annotation or review status assigned to it, because printing requires reviewable content to output.

To print the review status only, select the review status from the timeline.

To modify the appearance of the rendered PDF file — for example, the font color, size, and style, or the background color of the comments and statuses — open the Annotation PDF configuration from Configuration Manager and modify the desired options. For example, to change the display color of the approved status, modify the color code in the corresponding field. This lets you standardize how statuses and comments appear across printed reviews. For information about changing the font color of annotations, see Annotating.

Return to the rendered PDF file and refresh it. The refreshed PDF reflects the changes you made.

Asset versioning asset-versioning

Asset versioning creates a snapshot of a digital asset at a specific point in time. Each version preserves the exact state of the asset so it can be restored to a previous state whenever needed. This enables non-destructive editing: to undo a change made to an asset, simply restore the unedited version, because the earlier snapshot remains intact and recoverable. As a result, versioning safeguards original content against accidental overwrites and supports reliable rollback across collaborative workflows.

When versions are created

Versions are created in the following scenarios:

You can also enable automatic versioning through a workflow, so versions are generated without manual intervention.

Metadata and renditions saved with each version

When you create a version for an asset, the metadata and renditions are saved along with the version. Renditions are rendered alternatives of the same image — for example, a Portable Network Graphics (PNG) rendition of an uploaded Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) file. Because these renditions and metadata are stored with the snapshot, restoring a version returns the asset to its complete prior state rather than the base file alone.

What versioning lets you do

The versioning functionality lets you:

How to create and manage asset versions

Start a workflow on an asset starting-a-workflow-on-an-asset

Starting a workflow on an asset lets you apply a defined, repeatable process—such as review, approval, or publishing—directly to that asset. Follow these steps to start a workflow:

Collections collections

A collection is an ordered set of assets used to share assets between users. Because a collection stores only references to assets rather than copies of the assets themselves, it can group assets from different locations into a single, shareable set without duplicating or moving the underlying files. This reference-based design makes collections well suited to collaboration, review, and distribution workflows where multiple users need consistent access to the same set of assets.

To know details of Collection management, see manage Collections.

Hide expired assets when viewing assets in desktop app or Adobe Asset Link hide-expired-assets-via-acp-api

Experience Manager desktop app provides access to the Digital Asset Management (DAM) repository from Windows or Mac desktop. Adobe Asset Link provides access to assets from within the supported Creative Cloud desktop applications.

Within the Experience Manager user interface, expired assets are hidden from view by default. This default behavior does not extend automatically to external access points. As a result, expired assets may still be viewed, searched, and fetched when users browse the repository through the desktop app and Adobe Asset Link. Hiding expired assets across these entry points supports consistent asset lifecycle governance, ensuring that content past its expiration is no longer surfaced to users regardless of how they connect to the DAM.

To prevent the viewing, searching, and fetching of expired assets when browsing from the desktop app and Asset Link, administrators apply the configuration below. This configuration works for all users, irrespective of administrator privilege — it operates at the repository configuration level rather than per-user, so a single setting governs the behavior for every account that accesses assets.

Configuration steps

curl -v -u admin:admin --location --request POST 'http://localhost:4502/conf/global/settings/dam/acpapi/configuration/_jcr_content' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'jcr:title=acpapiconfig' \
--data-urlencode 'hideExpiredAssets=true' \
--data-urlencode 'hideExpiredAssets@TypeHint=Boolean' \
--data-urlencode 'jcr:primaryType=nt:unstructured' \
--data-urlencode '../../jcr:primaryType=sling:Folder'

Once applied, expired assets are excluded from browsing, search, and fetch operations across the desktop app and Adobe Asset Link, matching the behavior already present in the Experience Manager user interface.

To know more, see how to browse DAM assets using desktop app and how to use Adobe Asset Link.

Permission model for move or publish operations permission-model

Moving an asset or Content Fragment in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) requires replicate permission, not merely write access to the source and destination folders. Write access alone is insufficient; the replicate permission is mandatory for a move or publish operation to complete.

A user who lacks replicate access does not receive an outright failure. Instead, the move enters a pending approval workflow state. The operation then waits for an administrator, defined as a user who holds the replicate permission, to approve or complete it. This is expected, by-design behavior, and not a defect or bug.

AEM intentionally gates replication-triggering actions behind the replicate permission. This ensures that only authorized users push content changes to publish environments, protecting content integrity and preventing unauthorized or accidental publication.

Stuck or pending move-replicate workflow stuck-pending

A move or copy workflow that appears stuck or pending is almost always caused by a missing replicate permission on the target path, not by a system defect. In Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), moving or copying content triggers a replication event, and the platform enforces a permission gate that pauses the workflow whenever the initiating user lacks the required access. Resolve it by confirming the permission and completing the approval, as follows:

Disabled Move button move-button

The Move button in the Assets UI stays grayed out until a destination folder checkbox is selected in the Select Destination dialog box. If the Move action appears grayed out or unresponsive, the most common cause is that no destination has been chosen yet.

How to enable the Move button:

Why the Move button stays disabled: The Move action requires a confirmed target folder before it can run. As a result, the button remains inactive whenever the Select Destination dialog is open but no folder checkbox has been selected. This ensures the Move operation always has a valid destination and prevents assets from being moved without a target.

Selecting the destination folder checkbox is easy to overlook, since simply navigating into or clicking a folder does not always register it as the confirmed destination. Verify that the checkbox for the folder is actually checked, and the Move button becomes active and clickable.

Private folders versus standard ACLs private-folders-versus-standard-ACLs

Private folders use a membership-based model that layers on top of and effectively overrides the standard Access Control List (ACL)–based sharing for the Share Link feature specifically. In practice, only the folder’s owner and explicitly added members can generate shared links or otherwise use sharing features on a private folder — even when the underlying group ACL is unchanged.

How the override works

Read access through the group ACL still lets group members browse a private folder, so members retain visibility into the folder’s contents. Sharing capability, however, is governed separately by the private-folder membership list rather than by the group ACL. This layered model ensures that browsing and sharing are controlled independently: a user can see a private folder because of read-level ACL access, yet remain unable to share it because they are not on the folder’s explicit membership list.

Troubleshooting restricted sharing

When investigating why a specific group can no longer share the folder, follow these steps:

Because private-folder membership overrides ACL-based sharing, a recent conversion to private directly explains restricted sharing even when the group ACL remains unchanged. As a result, restoring sharing requires adding the relevant users as explicit members of the private folder rather than modifying the group ACL.

Folder structure and performance guidance folder-structure-and-performance-guidance

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) recommends keeping the number of direct children under any single folder to roughly 1,000 for optimal performance and usability. While AEM does not enforce a hard technical limit on the number of subfolders or assets stored under a single folder, staying near this practical ceiling keeps content operations responsive.

In this context, direct children are the combined count of subfolders and assets immediately under a single folder.

Why the ~1,000 threshold matters: As the number of direct children grows into the several-thousand range, AEM must enumerate, sort, and index a much larger set of items each time the folder is accessed. Because of this larger workload, folders with several thousand direct children typically exhibit degraded performance across common operations, including:

Best practice: subdivide proactively. If a folder is expected to grow beyond roughly 1,000 direct children, introduce additional grouping or subfolder levels before performance issues appear rather than after. Establishing a logical hierarchy in advance distributes items across multiple smaller folders, keeping each folder’s child count within the responsive range and preventing the listing, moving, and workflow slowdowns associated with oversized folders.

Known UI behavior known-UI-behavior

Avoid using slashes (/) in folder titles in the Assets UI. This is a documented behavior, not a bug in the underlying repository.

A slash (/) in a folder title interferes with the Column View rendering logic. As a result, the affected folder’s subfolders fail to display in Column View, even though the subfolders still exist in the repository and remain intact.

Cause

The rendering logic in Column View treats the slash character as a path separator. Because a slash inside a folder title collides with how the interface parses hierarchy, the view cannot resolve and draw the child folders beneath that title. The children are not lost — they are simply hidden from the Column View display.

Troubleshooting steps

If Column View unexpectedly shows an empty folder that actually has children, work through the following checks before assuming a deeper indexing or permissions problem:

Troubleshooting checklist troubleshooting-checklist

See also