Receiving "Invalid URL" When Attempting to Link Into a Share Drive Folder

Tim Williamson · 04/27/15

I've scoured the interweb trying to figure out how to link from my Smartsheet into a share folder using an html link, and have tried several different methods, but keep getting this error message whenver I try.

Any suggestions?

Travis · 04/27/15

Tim - Could you clarify what you are attempting to do and give the steps you are trying? Are you referring to a Google Drive? Are you trying to link a shared Drive folder to a Smartsheet or are you trying to link a Smartsheet to a shared Drive folder?

Tim Williamson · 04/28/15

Travis - I am attempting to link a Smartsheet to a shared drive folder on our company's network. Have seen several articles from different websites, but it seems that Smartsheet won't recognize any of the link formats that I'm attempting to use. Does this capability exist?

Travis · 04/28/15

Thanks Tim! It’s not going to be possible to link to locate files on your company network. You can only link to files on internet based services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc. Some of these services can sync with local folders. You might consider setting this up then creating a link to the online synced folder.

Vijay · 02/02/16

Travis - My local files contains confidential information and I cannot use a cloud service or smartsheet to upload my files. Is there a consideration for allowing users to link locally? At least disable the validation on what is considered a URL format to allow user to put in local path as a hyperlink.

Travis · 02/02/16

This is not something I have heard they are considering adding but the Product team always takes user feedback into account when developing new functionality. I will pass your suggestion along to the Product team!

You could paste in the local link to a cell (as text). Then when you want to access it, copy and paste the link to a new browser tab or whichever system you want to use to access the local file.

Oliver Rew · 02/18/16

Travis, I am running into the same problem as Vijay and am wondering if the development team has made any progress on this. Copying and pasting a link into my file browser seems awfully cumbersome for a Cloud Based Productivity App . As far as I can see, the only road block to this is the "Invalid URL" notice. Local links work native in just about any web environment just like a global hyperlink, I can't really see any security concerns for this addition functionality. Would they consider just offering the option of disabling thte URL validation because it is really just a hand-holding feature? Thanks for your time!

Travis · 02/19/16

Oliver - I understand and I will certainly pass this along.

In my opinion, this could lead to a poor experience for some users. A local file is only accessible from that local machine (or multiple local machines if its on a network drive each machine can access).

For everyone else trying to access from any other computer, network, or device, they would not be able to access that file and would get an error.

A benefit of a cloud based application is that all your data is accessible from any computer/device from any location at any time. Local files are limited to specific machines that have access to that specific file.

Again - this is my opinion and I know there are use cases where this would not be an issue.

Rence · 04/13/16

Travis - I definitely understand where you're coming from, but when everyone using the smartsheet is accessing it from the same network (as is the case for many people in organizations) and have shared drives, being able to link to those files would be immensely helpful. I know network drives are old school when you can share via Slack, Dropbox, Google Docs, etc - but a lot of orgs still use shared drives as the place where major documents (like campaign plans, calendars, etc) live.

As a result, attaching them or moving them into another place means having to repeatedly copy them back to the shared drive so everyone has access to the most up-do-date file.

Since it would just be a matter of allowing that type of link, and since literally everyone on a network would have access to the file, it would save a lot of time to be able to link to these documents.

RAQUEL ZUNIGA · 06/08/16

Have been there any update on this one. I think this one will really improve the utility of the Smartsheets.

Kate French · 06/10/16

Hi Raquel, we're still currently supporting web URL links and attachments and not local files, but I've added your vote for this feature to our Enhancement Request list as well!

Mark · 08/22/16

I think you really need to add this feature, we just want to add a hyperlink to a shared folder location, we can do this with sharepoint. You just need to allow it to accept //fileserver/...... in the hyperlink option.

Kennedy Stomps · 08/23/16

Hi Mark-- I've added your vote for this to our enhancement request list!

Joachim Muller · 09/08/16

Hi,

I am also very interested in this function. Is there any chance update will happen this year?

Joachim

Susan Keil · 09/22/16

Has there been an update to whether or not this might be a future feature enhancement? If not, please add my vote!

This is a feature we could use within our company, as well. It would provide linkage between SmartSheet summary logs to shared company network drives where working files are archived. This would be a time-saver during ISO audits when the reviewer challenges document traceability.

Jeremy · 11/21/16

I too, would like to have the ability to have hyperlinks to documents on our server.

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Receiving "Invalid URL" When Attempting to Link Into a Share Drive Folder

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