I have run into this issue myself, my solution for this ended up being a quick hack to toggle this inheritence so that subheadings could reach into superheadings when referencing the same attachments.
#+BEGIN_SRC elisp (defun org-attach-switch-inheritence () "Allows for Subtrees to have their own distinct attach directories" (interactive) (if (member "ID" org-use-property-inheritance) (progn (setq org-use-property-inheritance (delete "ID" org-use-property-inheritance) ) (message "ID Inheritance Disabled") ) (add-to-list 'org-use-property-inheritance "ID") (message "ID Inheritance Enabled") ) ) ;; keybinding for C-c C-A (local-set-key [3 33554433] 'org-attach-switch-inheritence) #+END_SRC Bastien writes: > Hi Julius, > > Dittmar <julius.ditt...@gmx.de> writes: > >> Hello friends, >> >> either I misunderstood something or I stumbled upon a bug. >> >> Situation: I have a heading with some files attached. This heading has >> an ID property, upon which the directory for those files is based. >> >> There's also a subheading with no ID. Inside of that subheading I'd like >> to link to one of the attached files. But although >> org-attach-use-inheritance is non-nil, the attachment is not found from >> inside that subheading. >> >> Shouldn't it be found? > > I tried your example and the file is found for both links. > > What is the exact value of `org-attach-use-inheritance' (t or 'selective)? > > If 'selective, what is the value of `org-use-property-inheritance'? > >> - GNU Emacs 26.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.10.9) of >> 2018-07-06 >> - org-mode: current master >> - no setting containing 'attach' in any configuration file > > Can you provide a reproducible recipe with a minimal configuration? > > Thanks,