Auto-update links to headers on header title change

@mano: you state

you can change the ^number for a block reference and the link still works fine.

I don’t understand that. If you link to a block you reference its ^number, so how can the link continue to work if you change that number when Licat himself has said that changing header and block links still needs to be fixed?

As for you other show case re block references via block quotes, all I picked up is that you use your own “meaningful reference string”, which is fine, but surely if you were to change that string the link would be broken?

This is a feature I’m very interested in as well.

Request

  1. Create a block reference (or header reference) in Document A
  2. Write document B
  3. Create a block reference from Doc A to Doc B with a random ID ^8d8763f
  4. Update the Block-ID ^8d8763f to ^meaningful-text in Doc B
  5. The block reference in Doc A will automatically update to ^meaningful-text
  • I would also like these ^block-ids to survive/update when moving them between files

Reason
While updating file names is lovely, sometimes I need a file to be a long list of, say, academic journal abstracts that I add to over time, and rearrange. I don’t want all abstracts in different files, but I do want to refer to specific abstracts. It would be very helpful if these references could update as well as the file names.

2 Likes

yeah, I am sorry, it doesn’t work the way I said it did. I can’t recall why I had that impression!

I’ll correct my original comment

Any news about that? This is a key feature to avoid inadvertently destroying important links. The same thing should be done for blocks as well.

Really important feature. Hope it gets some love sooner rather than later.

+1 from me as well.

Also very important for me! Today I tried to update a h1 link manually and deleted a whole file by accident…

+1 from me too.

I’d like to see this applied to any and all level of links – including block level since custom names are supported, meaning they may change at the user’s whims. I also mentioned this feature here.

1 Like

I just had a broken link because the heading was changed. After that I found this topic. Thanks for making this feature request.

Dear @WhiteNoise, any news on when this might be worked on or even implemented? I just saw it’s already on the roadmap, which made me quite happy.

As there are “only” five goals on the roadmap, I intuitively thought that it will be available in the foreseeable future. But as it is listed under “long term” I am unsure if that is a euphemism or a broader but still measurable timeframe.

Could you please share your estimate?

I am sorry, no estimates. It will happen.

Another vote to implement this, please!

+1 for this feature!

+1 from me for this too

Leaving my humble +1 for this great feature

hello is the last update supose to fix it ? Because it is still not working.

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-release-v0-12-15-insider-build/23348

0.12.15 contains a partial implementation of this. You need to right click on the header and rename using a specific menu.

5 Likes

I am going to close this FR and open a new one asking specifically for automatic/inline rename without the need for an external dialog.

3 Likes
6 Likes

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