How to show a file as just a link
 

hi,

as a relatively new UR user, I've been playing around with the different ways of importing documents - storing, linking etc. What I wanted to end up with was an item that was just a link to a file and nothing else. I somehow got this the way I wanted in one database - by copying the file in Windows Explorer then pasting it into the Data Explorer. This gave me an item that displayed just the link message: "Click here to open linked document". This is more or less the way I want my linked document items to appear.

However when I do the same thing in any other database, I get the document contents displaying in the item rather than just "Click here" etc. In each case I'm just copying and pasting the file from Windows Explorer. Is there any way I can control how the copied file ends up, so I can get it as just a link?

In Options I have "Store contents when importing and synching" turned off.

cheers

Smith-Corona

if you link it, it's always just a link (+/- whether you also want it to be indexed).

The difference between showing "Click here to open linked document" or actually showing the content of the LINKED file is in the option setting:

Options->Browser->File extentiones to display in internal browser view

There are two different things going on here.

1) Whether an imported document is linked or stored in UR. By default (with the option you mentioned being unchecked), copy/paste or drag/drop from Explorer into UR will link. The indicators of a linked document are:
a) [Stored] not displayed following item title in the Item Detail spane
b) No Document Size attribute in Item Attributes Pane
c) Store Contents item on the Item toolbar/menu not depressed
http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/Ma...recontents.htm

2) Whether the imported document is displayed within UR. This is configured via several options at Tools | Options | Documents/Editor/Browser.
http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/Ma...etailspane.htm

Thanks for the replies. Just to clarify, there's no doubt that the documents in question are linked rather than stored. The document size attribute is zero; the documents themselves are not editable within UR; if you make a change to the original and then synch (ctrl-f5), the linked copy in UR updates.

It's just to do with what actually displays in the Item Details pane with these linked documents. As pointed out, this depends on what Browser options are set. The file extensions in question - Word and pdf - are not in the "show in browser" option, so you just get an unformatted "text" display. But what I wanted was to not have anything in the Item Detail pane at all, other than the "click here to open external" link. It's cosmetic really, I just like to have only the link showing and not see the contents at all (as I'm not going to be working with them in UR, only externally). Seems less distracting.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I found the way to do what I wanted - use File > Import, Files, and then check "Do not process documents for text, summary or icon information" (and of course leave "Store file contents" unchecked.) This gives me an item which contains only the link to the external file.

I guess there are things you miss out on by doing it this way - eg ability to search on the files within UR?

Still a bit odd to get a difference in behaviour between databases when copying and pasting files, as per my original post.

It sounds like UR was able to parse text from some documents but not others. Try unchecking 'Tools | Options | Editor | Show item text for documents with no viewer'.

Thanks Kinook, that does the trick! Unchecking that option works as suggested. For some reason in one database it was as though this option was always unchecked, even when it wasn't.

Just by way of wrapping up loose ends, is there a difference between doing it this way, and going the "do not process documents" when importing route? It *seems* to end up as the same thing.

With that option unchecked, UR will not parse and store text from imported documents, the result being that you won't be able to search on text in the imported documents and a smaller .urd database file size.