Link to external file with special characters / "Umlauts" like ä, ü, ö in it

Hi guys,

I wonder in which cases links to files with Umlauts in their pathname (like “ü”, “ö”, “ä”, …) work, and in which cases they don’t work.

I tried the following to link to external files (extern of the obsidian vault), both, local on my laptop and on a server:

I realised, that the link to the local files work, no matter if the Umlaut “ü” is in the filename, or in the foldername.

But also I realised, that the links to server-files don’t work, if there is a Umlaut in it.

How can I solve that problem? I cannot rename the server-folder, because its a public shared folder…

Thanks in advance,
Silias

… Isn’t there anybody, who has an idea? … or isn’t that even a issue of obsidian, but an issue of that server?

It’s hard to tell because you’ve obfuscated a lot of the path, including text directly around the umlauts.

Perhaps it is the server. I don’t know, but alternatively it might not actually be an umlaut problem, but maybe a problem with backslashes triggering escape characters. Could you try forward slashes as a test?

Or can you anonymize your server path so you can paste the actual contents, so we can search for syntax problems, or attempt to recreate the problem?

You might also need to represent the special characters as html entities: HTML umlauts and special characters (Entities and Unicodes list) | Adfreak

(These are all just guesses.)

1 Like

Hi, thanks for your support! :slight_smile:

I tried your suggests, here are my results:

and here the code:

[server-folder "testü"; file: "test"](<file:\\vm-shares-001\User\Liebel\testü\test.pdf>) => ==works not==
![[Pasted image 20221102102437.png]]
		[same, but with forward-slashes](<file://vm-shares-001/User/Liebel/testü/test.pdf>)=> ==works not==
		![[Pasted image 20221102102929.png]]
		[same, but with Name in HTML "&uuml"](<file:\\vm-shares-001\User\Liebel\test&uuml\test.pdf>) => ==works not==
		![[Pasted image 20221102103300.png]]
		[same, but with Unicode in HTML "&#252"](<file:\\vm-shares-001\User\Liebel\test&#252\test.pdf>) => ==works not==
		![[Pasted image 20221102103514.png]]

[server-folder "testü"; file: "testü"](<file:\\vm-shares-001\User\Liebel\testü\testü.pdf>)=> ==works not==
![[Pasted image 20221102102412.png]]

[server-folder "test"; file: "test"](<file:\\vm-shares-001\User\Liebel\test\test.pdf>)=> works
[same, but with forward-slashes](<file://vm-shares-001/User/Liebel/test/test.pdf>)=> works

[server-folder "test"; file: "testü"](<file:\\vm-shares-001\User\Liebel\test\testü.pdf>)=> ==works not==
![[Pasted image 20221102102708.png]]

If your link is handled as an URL, you have to encode it according to the URL encoding scheme.

1 Like

Hi Amolip,

Can you please explain, what your reply means according to my post?

  • Do you think it has something to do with how the server interprets my file-link?
  • If so, wouldn’t that mean, that the used file link (like \vm-shares-001\User\Liebel\testü\testü.pdf) should also not work in any other software? … - I tried that: I inserted that link in MS Word and out of that software it was possible to open that file through that link…

Could you please explain to me, what indicates to you, that I didn’t encode link correctly?

@rigmarole gave the following suggestions to me:

  • “Could you try forward slashes as a test?” => I tried it, did not work, see my post above
  • “You might also need to represent the special characters as html entities” => I tried it, did not work, see my post above

Thanks in advance!!!
Kind regards, Silias

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