Updating links should not change original text

Steps to reproduce

As described at Basic note taking: - Obsidian Help

  1. Create a link in a file, preferably inside a sentence. Example:

This means you can [[write naturally]] about [[whatever comes to mind]] and then go back and create the new notes at your leisure.

  1. Follow that link.
  2. Change the name of the file, confirming the change if needed. For example, change the name of the file “write naturally” to “Natural Writing.”

Expected result

I expect the text in the original file to remain the same, but updated to point to the new file using piping, as in:

This means you can [[Natural Writing|write naturally]] about [[whatever comes to mind]] and then go back and create the new notes at your leisure.

Actual result

Instead, what happens is that my original writing has changed, meaning I’ve lost data:

This means you can [[Natural Writing]] about [[whatever comes to mind]] and then go back and create the new notes at your leisure.


Additional information

While I can see some use for the ability to change the original text, surely, with the free-floating writing and linking Obsidian encourages, not changing my writing should be the default.

9 Likes

I like this idea a lot! It would have saved me a couple of headaches.

2 Likes

Agree. That is why I don’t use this approach to writing. Instead I add “See also” section at the bottom of file or add links in brackets after the current sentence.

But I not sure that your proposal is acceptable in all cases. For example, for my files, structured as I described above, i want links to be updated and always reflecting actual filenames.

I think if we want preserve original text of the link in future, we should create this link in special way, e.g. (attention to extra | in link):

This means you can [[write naturally|]] about [[whatever comes to mind|]] and then go back and create the new notes at your leisure.

3 Likes

This means you can [[write naturally|]] about [[whatever comes to mind|]] and then go back and create the new notes at your leisure.

If you do that thing with the extra | in link, Is not a solution because the links will disappear in the preview mode (just tested). It shows like this:

This means you can about and then go back and create the new notes at your leisure.

1 Like

This seems related to my problem of needing to manually create several aliases for one note to a central term, because changing the name of the note would obviously change the text, but I can also not create a new note for every variation of a term (history, historian, historical, historiographical, etc…). "Fuzzy" or truncated aliases with placeholders (otherwise linking is basically neutralized...) - #3 by sonsche

So maybe creating a new page and then aliasing the old term would be a workaround?

Compare these issues: Automatically insert aliases into frontmatter from newly created aliases

1 Like

This sounds like a good plugin idea.

1 Like

I like this idea too. +1

2 Likes

He’s suggesting this as a possible fix, not saying it works now.

I’ve run into this issue too, I agree that the original text should be kept.

2 Likes