How to link from Trello to folder on shared network drive

[Steve Dickey]

We have a folder on a shared network drive that contains a number of documents. I want to create a link in a Trello card to that folder.

How can I create a link in Trello to that folder?

[Mike · Accepted solution]

Hi Steve,

Natively, you're not able to create a link to that file. Currently, Trello does not allow attaching local files without them being uploaded to Trello’s servers. This means that shared drive attachments, attachments stored on an FTP server, and other local file storage options can’t be used with Trello without uploading those files to Trello’s servers. As a result, additional changes made to the file in your local shared drive won’t be reflected in Trello, so not ideal.

If you want to keep the file there, as opposed to a cloud storage solution like Google Drive or Dropbox, you can manually paste a link to that file if your computer has assigned a drive letter, like file://F/image.png

When that link is clicked on, Trello will prompt you to copy the link and paste it in to your own browser. (For security reasons, Trello is not able to directly open file protocols other than http://, https://, or mailto:.) Your computer will then try to open the file.

[Steve Dickey]

Ok, thank you Michael. That answers my question.

[Michael Pitkin]

Hi @Mike
I am also in the same position where some information is kept on a central controlled drive, for good reasons I will not go into here. 

Adding File:// Does not work, if it did before, Trello keeps adding http:// in front.  Which would be fine if it didn't strip the ':' off File://.

Also when I enter a link, every space separates the hyperlink into a new link. 

Is there a possibility of fixing, or getting around this issue without manually inserting %20 's ? 

Is there a new fix to the File option you provided as this does not seem to work now?

[Mike]

Hi Michael, sorry, I should have been more clear—you can't attach a file:// link, that's true. You can manually insert that link in card descriptions or comments. We have this documented here: https://help.trello.com/article/1040-why-cant-i-open-file-links

The link problem is more difficult because web URLs cannot contain spaces, so Trello's markdown works around them. When you link to something that has a space, it needs to be encoded, and spaces do need to be replaced with %20 in order to work as a link. I'm not sure there's a great solution, because links aren't really meant to work this way, and I think any automated solution, like with Butler, would be pretty complicated to get running! If you copy the text with the spaces and paste it into a web browser tab, you'll see the browser automatically change the spaces to %20, so while it's for sure an additional step, you could do that, then copy that to paste into Trello. Not ideal, but worth a try!