Why links to headings on the same page opening in Edit mode in Legacy editor?

[Sri Krishna Devaraya Vuyyuru]

I have a hundred pages (all written by me) on our confluence. Yesterday, I was browsing through some of the old pages and found that almost no link is working in them. Every time I click a link (that's supposed to take me to a heading on the same page), the page opens in Edit mode or doesn't respond at all. (I'm absolutely sure, I've tested every such link (I still do) when I wrote those documents originally and ensured they are working, before I published them).

Now, when I open them in edit mode, I notice, the links have mysteriously turned into Page Name#MyHeading (the same page name is inserted before the #). Originally they were just #MyHeading. Its just astonishing how they became Page Name#MyHeading on their own (no one edited them after being published).
And now, when I try to fix the links by removing the Page Name part, only some of the links work, not all.
Any solution to fix all those links in all those hundred pages?

[Davin Studer]

To link to a shared folder you use this format. Keep in mind this will ONLY work with Internet Explorer by default as it is the only browser that supports the file protocol out of the box. You can get extensions for Chrome and Firefox that will enable the file protocol.

file://///server/path/to/document.doc

Yes, you need five slashes at the front. The protocol is "file:///" ... with three(not two)slashes. The next two slashes are the beginning of the UNC path.

Firefox extension
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src=search
(In the extension options on the Advanced tab->Trusted tab ->Allow local links

Chrome Extension
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/locallinks/fkkidcgelfcjmebocoaicnelkbnpgpmm 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You need to start by thinking about how you are presenting these links.

A basic c:\directory will only ever open the local directory on the user's machine, and the way to enable that as a "link" is entirely down to the browser on the user's machine.  And not of much use because each machine is different.  Most importantly, I don't think it's what you mean.

I suspect you've got shared directories on a server somewhere.  The question about linking to them now becomes "how are you publishing these shares?"