How to Work with Links

Assumptions

The directions in this document assume the following of its readers:

1. The reader has basic computing skills and knowledge and basic knowledge of common applications such as text editors and word processors and a general knowledge of using menu based commands such as copy, paste and copy shortcut.
2. The reader has sufficient permissions in the SharePoint environment to edit pages.
3. The reader knows how to log in and navigate in the SharePoint authoring environment and is familiar with basic SharePoint navigation and authoring principles.
4. The reader will abide by all applicable state or agency rules, guidelines and/or policies governing the use and display of appropriate content for display on Oregon.gov and its related websites.

Scope

This Article will discuss hyperlinks and what can be done with them in SharePoint. 

What’s a Link?

A link or more properly hyperlink is simply a shortcut on a page or document from one place to another. This can be from one page to another on the internet, from a standalone document to an internet page, from one location on a page to another location on the same page, or more recently, from a published, printed document like a magazine, sign or advertisement directly to a web page in the form of Quick Response (QR) codes. Links are the most basic of the internet tools allowing users to jump from one area of interest to another without having to manually navigate a linear path of web pages to get from one place to another.

How Do I Make A Link? 

Making a link is as easy as, well, it’s easy. Just decide on the word or words on the page that will be the link and highlight them, then use the ribbon to insert a link. Type the destination and any other pertinent information and voilà’ a hyperlink is born. 

This article will assume a page has been created and contains some text that you wish to turn in to a link.

Create an Internal Link 

Internal links point to a destination that is inside of the current site collection. Open the page for editing if it is not already.

• Select the word or words that will become the link.
• Activate the ‘Insert’ Ribbon tab by clicking on it.
• Choose ‘Link’ and ‘from SharePoint’

• Browse to the destination of the link.
• Verify the correct file is reflected in the ‘Location (URL)’ field.
• Click ‘Insert’

Once the link is established, the 'Link' tab will appear in the ribbon when the cursor is placed within the link text.

If desired, a description can be entered.  The description will act as a tool tip on a mouseover of the link.  

Check in and publish the page as normal.  

Create an External Link

The only real difference here is the selection and the link entry method.

While editing the page, use the Insert menu and choose 'Link' and 'From Address'.

  

 Then type or paste the URL of the link into the 'Address' field.

Click 'Ok' and procede as with an internal link above.

How do I Change a Broken Link?

From time to time, page and document addresses change and links get broken. When that happens, its time to fix the link.

You will first want to obtain the new URL (the Universal Resource Locator or the http://www . . . location). Not all of them require the www part. This is also known as the web address of the page or document. Copy the new URL into your clipboard by highlighting the URL, right clicking and chosing ‘copy’ from the right click menu. The new URL is now in your clipboard and ready to be pasted.

Navigate to the page containing the broken link.

• Open the page for editing.
• Place the cursor somewhere in the link that needs to be changed.
• The ‘Link Tools’ tab will appear in the ribbon. Activate it by clicking the tab.

Use the URL field to type or paste in a new URL or use the 'Select Link' feature 

Check in and publish the page as normal.

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