John said:
I need to provide a link to a server folder for a number of email
recipients. I go to insert hyperlink then select file and I type in
my path.
file://\\stlwolsvr01\Im\6Depts\Strip_and_Plate\Plate Mill Reporting\Daily
Repoting\Milcos Report\
Then press OK When the recipients recieve the email the hyperlink it
does not work? What am I doing wrong?
Why are you trying to combine the file:// URL scheme with UNC pathing?
To see an example of the syntax (which uses *forward* slashes) for the
file: URL scheme, read RFC 1738:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt
section 3.10
For examples of using the UNC scheme to specify the target file, read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(computing)#Uniform_Naming_Convention
However, it is highly unlikely that your recipient will have access to
the same host as you unless you make sure it is an external host to your
intranet, like some online file storage service, and you need to ensure
permissions on the file allow anyone to read it. Obviously the
"computername" parameter would have be resolvable to your recipients.
Most times when a UNC path is mentioned in an e-mail, it is when
collaborating with other employees inside the same corporate network
with proper access rights to the same path on a networked host.
It is possible to include spaces in a URL but in most cases it will get
parsed incorrectly. If you expect the recipient to copy and paste the
URL string into the Address Bar of their web browser then it will
probably work. However, if you expect the link to be presented as a
clickable link (a feature performed by the e-mail client that parses out
URL strings) then it won't work since parsing will terminate at the
first space character. So, like Diane mentions, you will need to
replace every space character in your URL with its identity character
equivalent (%20).
Of course, it is foolish in the first place to be putting spaces in the
path to a file (or even in the file name) since it invariable leads to
parsing problems. Either replace the spaces with underscores or remove
the spaces (and use the scheme of capitalizing the first character of
each word in the path or file name).
