Yes, this issue has returned in version 6.

This issue appears to have returned in version 6; links using file:// are stripped from the page upon entering editor mode.

Rachel, how did the upgrade from 3.5 to 5.1 go?

Hi Edith,

Thanks very much for your prompt reply! We are going to try testing this with a test instance and a test copy of the production database.

Do you know if there would be any issues of going from 3.5.x directly to 5.1.2? We are eager to use the new Blueprints feature, so we will try upgrading directly to 5.1.2 without upgrading to 5.0.3 first. If you happen to know of any issues, that would be good to know in advance.

Thanks much for your help,
Rachel Struthers

Hi rmstruthers,

Yes you can upgrade from 3.5.x to 5.0.3. This is an exception to our recommendation, and I'll ensure that our 4.x upgrade notes are updated accordingly.

As with any upgrade, it's important to back up and test the upgrade before proceeding with the upgrade on a production server.

Regards,
Edith

Can we upgrade directly from 3.5.x to 5.0.3? If we can't, then it seems that this issue is not resolved.

The upgrade instructions here: Upgrading Confluence, state this:

If the above is true, then it doesn't seem like this is really fixed. Anyone that already has 4.x already has had their file links broken and upgrading to 5.x won't fix that. Anyone that is at 3.x would have to upgrade to 4.x first. However, since there is no fix in 4.x that preserves the file links, then there is no way to transition from 3.x to 5.x and still preserve the file links.

Hi Edith,
The behavior of this problem is discussed on this forum and apparentrly it is corrrected in Confluence v5.x.
Our confluence server is based on linux. All our share are based on windows or novell servers.

I will gladely open a support request but if it is so be told that I have to upgrade to v5, that wont be the case;

Sincerly,
Michael

I'm sorry to hear that you're still having this problem.

Testing on a Windows VM, I'm able to insert links (clickable in the browser) in the following formats:

file://...
\\...

There could be a number of confounding variables here, so you may wish to raise a support request so that we can more thoroughly investigate what's happening and whether there's a solution for your particular situation. Providing as much background as possible on that request (including our conversation here) should help to speed up the process.

Regards,
Edith

Hi Edith,
Thanks for your post.

It doesnt work better with

"file :///..."

the link doesnt work either.

But the primary functionality is "to be able" to click on the link and not copying the link in the url bar to open the file.
That is why we use 5 "/////".

Michael

Hi mikmouk,

You should be able to add links using the following format:

file:///clausius/DAT/Bureauti/Modeles2000/Cti/Juridique/AIMP-FAO

Regards,
Edith

This is a serious downgrade feature that blocks a thousand pages that are to be manually changed.
We are using Confluence 4.3.7 and I cannot even add manually a link to a network file without going with the xhtml editor.
Just try to add a web link for example like this:

web adress: file://///clausius/DAT/Bureauti/Modeles2000/Cti/Juridique/AIMP-FAO_decision.dot
link name : demo
I have tried with file://\\\........ or
or \\\ nothing works.

When you save the page, the link is not an href, but a simple underlined word "demo".
This is totally a loosy malfunction...

Unfortunately the fix is only available in 5.0.3. If you're upgrading from a very early version of Confluence (earlier than 3.5.x) you may wish to contact Atlassian Support before the upgrade with the full details of your environment.

Will fix available for Confluence 4.3.X?

This needs a fix ASAP. We cant replace
to file://.
Our environment is HUGE around 25,000 users using confluence and many of the pages have interlink.

By the old version (3.5), I wrote the file path as follows.

[AAAAA|\\sample\test\project\test.txt]

After upgrade　(4.3.3), I edited the page to which this file path was written. I am not editing the file path.
But, the file path was changed automatically.

http://\\sample\test\project\test.txt

By the result, I must change all file path.

Please stop automatic correction.

Hi,

Your link is bad, an ahref to a local filesystem must use this syntax

<a href="file:///foldername/filename.txt">filename.txt</a>

Additionally I got our JIRA upgraded to V5 which was needed to cope with our IT dept forcing IE9 (and banning everything else!) upon us and now I am running into compatibility problems with that browser and Confluence 3.5!!! I need to upgrade Confluence! Please fix this bug.

I cannot understand why/how such a big regression (worse than a bug), with such a big impact (ie, global, actually) does not receive a top priority?!

I see this just got moved back to the 4.3.backlog. Just to reiterate - this is a complete blocker to us moving from Confluence 3.5. Most of our pages have hyperlinks into our network servers to things like project plans, customer specifications, work instructions, etc. If we are unable to hyperlink to these sort of things in their native folders (rather than attaching them to Confleunce pages) then Confluence will be, essentially, useless for us. Please fix ASAP. Thanks a million

No, I haven't tried that before.

Looks like a global find replace on the XML export might work. Is that what you tried Josh?

Stefan's fix also worked for us. Ditto on Dave's suggestion for a global find/replace solution.

The first table didn't render well above, hope it'll be displayed better here:

Behaviors in Confluence

Scenario	Sample#1	Sample#2	Sample#3
1. Confluence 3.5.13 (all works) - wiki markup	[foobarDocs|\\\\\foobar.com\dfsrb\DfsDE\foobardocs.doc]	[foobarSpreadsheet|\\foobarhouse\spreadsheet\foobarspreadsheet.xls]	[foobarPreso|\\\C:\Foo\Bar\foobarpreso.ppt]
2. Post-upgrade Confluence 4.2.5 - storage format)	Link retains correctly: <a href="\\\\\foobar.com\dfsrb\DfsDE\foobardocs.doc">foobarDocs</a>	Link retains correctly: <a href="\\foobarhouse\spreadsheet\foobarspreadsheet.xls">foobarSpreadsheet</a>	Plain text (original link is lost): foobarPreso (\\\Y:\C:\Foo\Bar\foobarpreso.ppt)
3. Once the page opened in the 4.2.5 editor and saved, although nothing is touched/changed - storage format	link is lost: <a>foobarDocs</a>	link is lost: <a>foobarSpreadsheet</a>	nothing changed: foobarPreso (\\\Y:\C:\Foo\Bar\foobarpreso.ppt)

Yep that works.

Still need this fixed though in order to be able to import v3.5.1 exported data into v4.x without breaking all the existing links.

Thanks again Stefan.

Nice one Stefan We will give it a go and report back here.

If this is the case is there any way to perform a global find/replace in order to convert the existing links...?

Thanks,

David

We had the same problem after the upgrade. But now it works fine without any problems.

It works with the Internet Explorer if you consider the following things:
1. Type "File:///" not "File://"
2. use "/" and not "\" for the path (for exampe "file:///J:/Projects/..."
3. Alternatively you can write "file://server/folder/Projects..." instead of "file:///J:/Projects/..."

This blocks out upgrade path completely. I can't ask users to convert our entire body of network links to HTML equivalents.

I don't think that this issue should have such a low priority. If this will not be fixed, we have a really big problem upgrading to Confluence 4 and I will have to look if there are alternatives for Confluence. We have a lot of links to documents on our shared filesystem.