How to link a local file in Obsidian?

fierce_ninja · July 30, 2021, 11:49pm

N1755L:

What has been working flawlessly for me is this format:

[Local file - Dr Charles Hoffe - Lytton BC Video Interview](<file:///Y:\Covid\Canadian Doctor Defies Gag Order - Tells Public How Moderna COVID Shots Killed and Disabled Patients-vdil0d.mp4>)

The text between the two square brackets is only a description of the file I’m linking to, and I always add "Local file - " at the beginning of the description so that I know what links are local files. I’m fairly new to Obsidian, and I’m adding the "Local file - " descriptor just in case that I discover later on that I can’t distinguish between different types of links. For now it seems pretty obvious which is which, but I want to future-proof just in case.

It is extremely irritating that mousing over the link doesn’t pop up a view of the underlying link, or show the underlying link on the bottom statusbar. This should be core functionality within Obsidian.

Anyway, then as you can see, the part between the parentheses is where the linking magic happens. Make certain to have the “<” sign after the first parenthesis, and “>” just before the last parenthesis. After “<”, you put in “file:///”, and then the full link to the filename.

As you can see from my example above, I have spaces in the filename, but the link works just fine without the “%20” fillers for the spaces. Maybe that’s just something with my system, if you find that the link is not working, try a quotation mark just before the drive letter, and another at the end of the filename (after the extension, I would think would be better). And if still not working, try to fill in the spaces with "%20"s, like this for example (with, and without the quotation marks encapsulating the complete filename):

[Local File - Covid Early Treatments](<file:///Y:/Covid/HTMLs/MATH+%20Protocol%20FLCCC%20Front%20Line%20COVID-19%20Critical%20Care%20Alliance.htm>)

This is the best solution IMO especially when you are dealing with connecting local files not necessarily inside the Obsidian vault.