Digital Workshop

A client asked me to create a hyperlink to launch in OPUS a PDF file they created. It worked in Preview, but not only wouldn't open when Published, but every time I would go to Edit the link, "http://" had been added in from of the file name, so my default Internet site would be opened. I would change this, test, re-Publish, but the error would re-occur every time.

Finally I looked at the PDF's file name. The client had a pair of brackets "[" and "]" at the end of the file name before the extension (PDF). I re-named the file using underscore instead. Problem solved.

Apparently OPUS doesn't like a bracket within a file name, and it thinks you really wanted a web URL.

Lesson Learned: DO NOT USE BRACKETS when naming files to open in OPUS.

Hi Fred,

That's odd. I tend to used Square Brackets for numbering sequential files such as MP3s and JPGs such as 'world[1].jpg' and have never had this problem with Opus.

I created a PDF and tried this using 'D:\djx3insweb[].pdf' and it also launched fine. It did add file:// but only if I selected the web action rather than the file launch action.

Can you post a screen shot of the offending action?

Mack

I've attached a screen grab of the Actions on this link. When the file name included "[1]" it would always change by adding "http://" in front of the file name when I would Publish. Since that's NOT the file name, the link would open my default Internet page (Google.com) instead of this PDF file. The problem was reported by my client several times, and each time I re-checked the link, only to find the addition of "http://". I would delete and save, but when I'd Publish -- it would come back.

I finally solved the problem by removing the "[1]" and using underscore "_1" instead. The problem has not reoccurred since then. There were three different Pages with this same Launch PDF command, and this problem repeated itself in all three locations. Again, once I changed the file name, everything works fine.

Ghosts in the machine?

Can't replicate it but thanks for the heads up. I use the linking of PDF files a lot and will double check when testing.

Mack

My client marches to a "different drummer" than computer people. She named a file and put periods after each word (Example: this.is.the.name.of.this.file.txt). This also cause OPUS to not work correctly with a Launch file link. Once I changed the periods (.) to underscores (_) everything worked fine.

I'm from the "old school" of only using eight characters, a period (.), then three characters for the file extension when naming files. I understand you can now have 128 characters (or is it 256?) for the file's name, and apparently Microsoft's Word will recognize multiple periods within a file's name, but some software doesn't like special characters or long names, so I try to avoid problems by keeping things simple.

Never fails to amaze me what people do. I actually think MS is wrong on this, periods should be left for identifying the extension AND Windows should be set to show for known file types by default so people can learn to identify them correctly!

Yes, bring back good old 8.3! Well may not, but something better than the system we currently have. File name lengths have caused me more headaches over the years. I think perhaps some kind of meta data would be more useful like we have with JPEGS. Need a rewrite of most common types though.

Mack