Drag & Drop from File Explorer to open page for an Internal Link

goodsignal · 2020-09-07T04:49:07.816Z

It would be great if we could simply drag a page that’s visible in File Explorer into position in our open document, and drop to create that internal link.

Interestingly, if you test this action in the current version (0.8.11) the UI suggests we already have this feature, but we don’t. Nothing happens when you drop the floating name into your page.

This post was created in an effort to keep feature requests atomic.

And this idea was posted once before by @gigahurt. Strangely it was closed and lost after being merged into a different topic about embedding attachments. That merge conflicts with organizing the forum atomically. (The only relation is that the two features may compete for the same UI action of dragging and dropping. If both features were implemented, one would need to be differentiated by a modifier key)

I-d-as · 2020-09-07T06:28:59.653Z

I agree. I also suggested this feature and it was merged here:

Drag from backlinks to note to drop a link into a note Feature requests

It would be nice to be able to drag backlinks over to a note to quickly drop a link.

ammarhusain · 2020-09-10T04:13:02.385Z

+1 this would be super useful!

Kuncy · 2020-09-17T16:04:20.620Z

I want this too!!

jellishero · 2020-09-20T22:14:11.269Z

+1 I would really like this

den · 2020-09-23T12:54:45.474Z

HOW IT SHOULD WORK:

Open empty note in edit mode
Drag test.md from file explorer into note
The link [[test]] is inserted as text

Solari · 2020-09-25T04:56:37.753Z

Was just gonna suggest this, glad I’m not alone!

It would make it easier to make new indexes, etc. by just dragging.

Thanks,
Ray

xurc · 2020-09-25T05:33:48.430Z

I agree, this should prove handy for many users. DEVONthink has a similar feature where you can link to a document from within another one by ⌘-⌥-drag.

PS. If you already use DEVONthink to index your vaults, this might be useful:

Linking Obsidian note to DEVONthink Resolved help

There is a remarkably easy way to link to the UUID of sources/documents in DEVONthink. In DT: index your obsidian vault, open the target note, then select the sources/docs you want to link to and Cmd-Alt-Drag & drop them into the note. Presto! the link(s) show up, properly formatted and named in Obsidian. (It took me a while to find an answer to this – and it is useful for DT users --, so I’ve crossposted this answer in a couple places here and on the discord server).

jwb · 2020-09-30T10:55:13.231Z

Yes. +1 But only if you can select and drag multiple notes at a time.

cxp4 · 2020-10-07T05:56:24.701Z

drag from the left pane to the content of the note currently being edited , and you have a link to the dragged note.

tuckytoo · 2020-11-09T22:41:15.210Z

I’m confused. Are we allowed to create links to internal files? How? When I put in the filepath for a file, I can’t click on it to navigate to the file. Any suggestions?

WhiteNoise · 2020-12-14T03:25:57.048Z

Will be implemented in v0.10.0

goodsignal · 2020-12-28T06:06:21.213Z

@WhiteNoise, It sure doesn’t seem like that’s what happened. Instead, it imports the contents of the file, and doesn’t create any internal link.

Furthermore, dragging something like a self-contained html file from a modern web page pretty much kills Obsidian (frozen for minutes).

Importing file content by drag-and-drop is great for images. Not so much for any other file type where copy/paste is already available and provides so much more control.

WhiteNoise · 2020-12-28T15:38:54.469Z

I am confused. we implemented a lot of (shift) drag-and-drop and copy paste in the few last releases.

It would be great if we could simply drag a page that’s visible in File Explorer into position in our open document, and drop to create that internal link.

You can do this. What am I missing?