Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with link

How to get Word links to work like on Wikipedia?

freddymungo — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:47:34 -0800

How could one change the colors of links in a Microsoft Word document? I'm using Office 2007, if it makes a difference. As it is, any link I insert is blue and when it's been clicked on it turns purple. Can I edit these colors like I could with CSS on an HTML document?

Secondly, is it possible for links pointing to files that don't exist to have a special color like red, like Wikipedia does when there's a link but no matching entry yet? All these files would be Word documents.

Thanks in advance!

MacgyverFilter: link sharing using MS Office

Monday, stony Monday — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:23:17 -0800

Macgyver IT: I want my team to use something like del.icio.us to share links. But since this is ask.metafilter, I can't use the obvious right answer. I need to make something like it myself, using ~~bubblegum and string~~ the MS Office 2000 suite and my knowledge of VB. What would be my best approach? This is clearly insane, but I want to try (please don't ask why I can't use something reasonable -- I just can't). I don't need the full del.icio.us, just links and tags. I'm also okay with having only one person at a time able to add a link to the dB, and everyone sharing a big ball of links.

I've thought about using an Excel file, but I don't know if there's a reasonable way to do that, or what that way would be. Could that work, or should I bite the bullet and go for Access? Is there a feature hidden somewhere (in Outlook?) that I'm overlooking?

How Do I Get My Website/Blog Out There?

goalyeehah — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:00:41 -0800

How can I expand my blog/website's reach. I launched my site last week and want to increase its reach around the planet ; ) What options do I have? I teach in the Los Angeles area and would like to begin doing workshops throughout the rest of the country and overseas. I'd like to use the website and blog as a means of increasing my visibility and building my network.

Where did my Little Java Link Go ?

duckus — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:36:21 -0800

I found a great Java programming site awhile back. I was given a programming task and could get immediate feedback on whether or not it was correct. Tasks were things like, test if two integers are equal and 'reverse a string'. It was targeted toward learning .. but I seem to recall the tasks had advancing levels of complexity. This is not Java BlackBelt. I can't believe I didn't bookmark it. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

My server needs more space!

gregr — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:08:33 -0800

One of my servers needs more space, but due to several reasons I can't add space directly to the server... I have a server that I use for backup and restore. When doing a restore BackupExec uses the local hard drive to store the data while it is being read off of tape.

I have a giant restore that is using all of the space on the drive in the machine. I can't add another physical drive because the server is in a blade center and the blade only has one hard drive slot. (I might be able to use an external hard drive, but because of the way the Blade Center shares USB ports none of the other blades would be able to use USB.)

So, some of the other servers on the network have extra drive space, but BackupExec will not restore to a mapped network drive. I've also tried making symbolic links directly to the other servers on the network using Junction, MkLink, Junction LinkMagic, and several other tools. I've also tried mapping a network drive then making symbolic links to the folders on the network drive.

Does anyone have suggestions about how to trick BackupExec into writing to a drive that is not physically attached to the backup server?

Facebook Link to .flv File

Timen — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:56:09 -0800

I am trying to link directly from Facebook to a .flv file hosted on my server. How can I accomplish this? The example .flv file I have for this problem is here. In my country, connecting abroad is slow. Domestic servers are quick, that's why I need to do this. Thanks!

Have you noticed the link outline?

jakubsnm — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:56:29 -0800

Have you noticed the link outline? When you click on links, before the page loads a dotted border appears arond the link called the link outline. Would you prefer professional looking sites to not display this outline? Wish i could show an exampe of a site.

* I'm pretty sure Internet Explorer does not support the disabling of the outline. I know Firefox does

URL WTF

mattdidthat — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:04:35 -0800

My site is getting a lot of weirdly-formed referring URLs--some with two or three URLs linked with commas--or URLs that do not appear to contain links to my site. What's going on? Here are two examples of URLs in my hit log--the first is one referrer that shows up in my log as three URLs (including mine) strung together:

http://www.lilidaviesnolink.co.uk/457/magic-betty-sing-along-6th-june, http://www.phonogramnolink.us/blogs2/dpdc/2009/05/trek_30.html, http://www.mattdidthatnolink.com/weblog

Another referring URL without a link to my site:

http://www.mp4dunyasinolink.com/index.php

(To make the URLs work, you'll need to remove the "nolink")

What's going on? What are these referrers, and why am I getting them? If this is spam, could someone please explain what they're doing and how I disable/remove it?

Looking for an infamous untrained british orchestra

jchgf — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:33:58 -0800

Looking for an old link: a recording of a wacky british orchestra of untrained musicians performing unrehearsed classics, such as Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathrousta. I may have dreamed this, but I think Youtube videos of one of this british orchestra / choir showed up in a Metafilter thread. Thanks!

To Popup Or Not To Popup?

chocolatepeanutbuttercup — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:48:22 -0800

To Popup or Not to Popup? I have a blog website. It's a serious site with a lot of content. We've been working hard on it and it's beginning to gain a nice little readership.

Currently, I am setting up any links within a post to open in the same window, in other words, without a target attribute set.

However, a few friends have opined that I should set up my anchor tags to launch a new window so that my viewers don't get lured away from my site when they click on a link.

My first reaction to this idea is that I want to avoid opening a popup window but perhaps I'm wrong.
Web designers and blog viewers - what is your current thinking on this? Which do you prefer?

on the lookout for outlook help

anoirmarie — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:04:24 -0800

I'm having trouble embedding a link in a picture and emailing it from Outlook. Can anyone help me? I've tried several html codes that I've found, but I can't seem to get any to work. I want to send a picture in the body of an email that links to specific Youtube video. I'd prefer to email the video, but that doesn't seem possible. Please advise.

Help me find untapped online searches!

spacefire — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:40:16 -0800

How can I find keywords that many people search for but don't find many links? For my eHow articles, I would like to maximize my return by writing about stuff that many people search for, but that doesn't have much of an online presence yet. Basically, stuff that is new, yet sought after. Are there any keyword finding programs that can tell you not only how many searches exist for a particular item or issues, and how many related results are returned by the search?

stochastic hyperlink required

ddaavviidd — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:47:41 -0800

Question about linking pages in a slightly random way with Dreamweaver... I have a basic understanding of html and can make my way around dreamweaver (which I learned by myself, so I am definitely not an advanced user!), but for a multimedia project I'm working on, I'd like to create a specific type of link. I would like to create a hyperlink that points to a group of pages (that would be grouped in a folder, or perhaps there is a tagging system that could be put into place?), but that randomly picks one of these pages (not the one that's currently live). I'm not sure if this is feasible with my poor programing knowledge, but I would hope there's a straightforward way to achieve it!

My idea is that if the audience enjoy a text (or an image for that matter), they could click on it and be directed to another related page, but not in a linear or predictive way.

Additionnal infos: the project is for an installation, so everything is going to be local (ie on the computer that runs the installation, in safari with mega zoomer). I can use good old dreamweaver 8 and/or flash mx to complete this simple task. I thought for a while that a cms might be easier to deal with to achieve that effect, but I already have a lot of pages already created and know nothing about css.

Wayback Machine Plugin for ALL old/dead outbound links on a website?

bollockovnikov — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:19:17 -0800

My old website still gets a lot of hits. But many of the outbound links I posted years back are no longer valid, are dead or have changed location. Is there any way to integrate the Wayback Machine Internet Archive into my site's code so that links are redirected to the archive for the date they were originally posted? Ideally I would like an integrated plugin that directed old outbound links to their archived page on Wayback automatically. It would be great if visitors to the site hardly even knew their click had been redirected. I would like to implement it site-wide, so that either:

1. All outbound links were directed to the original date they were posted, or
2. If links are dead then the plugin kicks in and directs to the wayback archive, or
3. The plugin places a Wayback version of each link next to the original (something like: Original Link [archive])

(My site is a self-hosted blogger blog - the old version - if that makes a difference...)

Is there a way?

How to convert TIGER line file into

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:28:13 -0800

Super-specific-GIS-filter: Converting TIGER/Line Files into a network of nodes and links? Has anyone ever converted a TIGER file into a network matrix? I've done extensive googling on the topic and found one piece of java code, but could not get it to work as there were lots of errors, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong (it was also pretty old).

I'd appreciate hearing if anyone has done this or knows of a way to do so. I'm interested in converting TIGER to this format so that I can do some network analysis processing in matlab.

I'm fairly new to this type of analysis, so perhaps I'm missing something obvious. Thanks!

Word to PDF conversion - where'd my links go?

operating thetan — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:55:51 -0800

How can I keep the embedded links in my Word doc when I convert to PDF? (MacOSX solutions preferred, though not required.) I have a bundle of Word docs with embedded hyperlinks that I need to convert to PDF, and I need to have those links active. In converting to PDF, (save as PDF or print to PDF in Word) the links go away. I have a copy of Adobe Acrobat 5.0 - I know how to physically add all the links, and how to create web links from URLs in text. Unfortunately it's time consuming to add all the links to all the documents in Acrobat, and the "create web links" batch function in Acrobat 5.0 only works for addresses in http format.
Are there any workarounds? Can I do this in a scalable, batch-friendly way? Software I can use - bonus points for free? I am running MacOSX Leopard, with Word 2008 though I have Word 2004 at home. Windows solutions appreciated too, we have PCs at work. Thanks in advance!

How can I launch URLs from the OS X dock (with proper icons)?

SethLeonard — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:34:09 -0800

How can I create an app/shortcut that lives in the OS X dock that has an icon of my choosing and launches in the browser of my choice? Difficulty: no @ icons, no SSB. It seemed like a simple task when I decided I wanted to launch Google Docs from my OS X dock. However, after much searching and testing, I have found the following options, none of which work for me:

1) Drag the URL/favicon onto the dock. This works great to launch the web page I want from the dock in my default browser (what I wanted). However, it also has that lame @ icon (which I can't seem to change to anything but a file type preview icon) AND it is forced to live outside of the app section.

2) Use a tool like Fluid (fluidapp.com) to create an application to launch the URL. This works great by using the icon of my choice and being able to be placed in the app section (solves above problems). But it also forces these links to open in an SSB (site specific browser) that loses all of my cookies, etc. I'd rather it just open in Firefox.

So, does anyone know of a way that I can combine these and have a URL launch from the dock:

- with the icon of my choice
- in Firefox
- from the app section of the dock (optional)

???

Thanks,
Seth

Help me find "missing link" cartoon

espertus — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:35:57 -0800

I am trying to find a cartoon where one caveman says to another something like: "Where's Link? He's missing." I thought it was a Far Side cartoon, but I looked through the entire Far Side collection and couldn't find it. I'd like to use it in a talk I am giving. I would also appreciate pointers to other "link" cartoons.

Can I link from desktop wallpaper?

Joleta — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:37:17 -0800

Is there any way I can create desktop wallpaper that has a link to a specific web site? Our company is launching a new human resources online system. We're going to push new wallpaper with a logo and tag line about the new system to all our Windows XP desktops. I was asked if we can include a link to the HR system login page. I've never seen this done within desktop wallpaper, but I don't want to just say "no" without checking. I do the graphics for all our corporate desktop wallpapers, but I'm not a programmer.

Super Drag And Don't Go?

Solomon — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:08:03 -0800

In Firefox, I use an addon called Super Drag And Go to change whether or not a link opens in a new tab or a background tab. I want to have this same functionality in Thunderbird. I want to be able to control, on a link by link basis, whether a new tab is opened, thereby bringing the Firefox window to the front, or a background tab is opened, which leaves the Thunderbird window in the forefront.

I've found this method of altering Firefox so that all new tabs are opened in the background, but that's not what I want. I want to be able to choose, link by link, which type of tab is used, the same was as I can with Super Drag And Go.

I'm not concerned about how I get this functionality (click+drag, right click + "open in background tab", etc), more that I am able to choose on a case by case basis.

I've tried Googling, but addons.mozilla.org seems to assume that Firefox addons will work in Thunderbird, but this isn't the case.

Is there an addon/tweak that will let me do this? And if so, where?

How is email formed?

Shecky — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:50:52 -0800

Is there a Firefox addon (other than StumbleUpon) that will allow me to email a link to whatever I'm currently viewing to someone else, without opening an external email program? In the SU toolbar, there is a button labeled "Send to..." that lets you forward a link to the current page/image/whatever to any email address with two clicks, no external email program needed. My wife does not have a StumbleUpon account and does not want one, and when I forwarded her a link yesterday, StumbleUpon took over and redirected the link to another random page with some content that made her cry. =( So I will no longer be using the SU toolbar for this purpose.

Is there another addon out there that will let me do the same thing or something close to it? I'm mainly looking for ease of use; i.e. no signup for yet another goofy social network, just click click and done. Thanks so much!

How to link to the contents of another link?

mathis23 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:24:55 -0800

Is there a way for a hyperlink to simply 'parrot' whatever a second hyperlink might be pointing toward? The overly simplified version of my situation would go something like this:

I have set up LinkA on Page1 to point toward a given file. I also need LinkB on Page2 to point toward this same file. The file however, and it's name, will change quite often.

Is there a way to set up LinkB to simply mimic/mirror/imitate whatever LinkA is pointing toward, so that all I ever need to do is to update the properties of LinkA?

What gets blogs noticed?

LSK — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:37:01 -0800

What gets blogs noticed? Well, this is a generic question, but one I couldn't find an answer to by searching previous questions, so I'm curious: Why do some blogs get attention when hundreds of thousands of others don't? Is it some ability of the author or just plain luck?

How do I link a bunch of documents into a formatted binder of sorts?

special-k — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:01:07 -0800

How do I link a bunch of documents together into a binder which automatically updates when changes are made? I’ll be turning in my dissertation in a few months and my chapters are in various stages of completion. Some are fully done (published) and others are in draft form. I would like to be able to link all the documents into a binder so at any given time I have a formatted dissertation ready to print, share or just (gasp) submit. Also, I don't want to scramble to do this at the very end.

Chapter text is currently in word 2007 format [can be easily saved as pdf]. Figures are in Adobe Illustrator format [can be easily saved as eps or pdf]
I want to have single formatted document with a table of contents and continuous page numbers. My goal is to have the individual chapters (and figures) linked to this document so any changes made to a individual file will update in this binder. As you can guess, some will not change [the ones already published] and others will change quite frequently. How do I do this?

I have Adobe Indesign but I am open to other software suggestions.
Thanks

My friend Moke and I are experiencing a cosmic cell phone link. What could cause this to happen?

doomtop — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:35:05 -0800

My friend Moke and I are experiencing a cosmic cell phone link. What could cause this to happen? My friend Moke and I are experiencing a cosmic cell phone link.

What seems to be happening is some of Moke's phone calls are redirected to my cell phone. It doesn't seem like my calls are going to him, but when I try to call him I get my voicemail instead. When he tries to call me, he gets his voicemail.

It only seems to happen when we are geographically close to each other. It doesn't happen all the time either, it seems to be random.

What could cause this to happen?