Using Confluence Cloud & trying to link to an internal network location
Asked by UB Dehart:

From our Confluence Cloud, I'm trying to link to a network location. We have enabled SSO \& I've verified with our Ops team that it isn't anything on our side. I've tried:

* [http://](http://filesharing.compeer.com/compeer/BT/DevDeploy/Development/LunchAndLearn/20200929%20MDM%20SuperBus%20Hub.mp4)
* [https://](https://filesharing.compeer.com/compeer/BT/DevDeploy/Development/LunchAndLearn/20200929%20MDM%20SuperBus%20Hub.mp4)
* [file://](https://compeer.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BT/pages/132546685/BT+Leadership)
* [file://](https://compeer.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BT/pages/132546685/BT+Leadership)/
* file://///

The link either goes to a random confluence page or displays the error: "

Hmmm... can't reach this page {#toc-hId--1297088853}
----------------------------------------------------

filesharing.company.com refused to connect.

Any suggestions?


Answers:
author: Jason Bemis
body: I am also having a similar problem.

my link is correctly pointing to file://///InternalServer/Folder/Folder/File.html

And firefox shows that is the link it will follow when I click on it.

But when I click on it, it does nothing.

Ctrl + Click does nothing.

If I right click on the link and say open in another tab, it opens another tab, but does not "go". I have to switch to the new tab, and then I have to put the cursor in the address bar and hit enter to get it to load.

If I right click on the link and select copy link, and then open a new tab and right click in the address bar select paste and Go, it just works.

If I download the confluence page with the links that don't work, and load that local copy of the page, the links works correctly.

So I believe that cloud confluence is putting in safety check on the links, and that is preventing us from opening local html files.

\<a data-testid="link-with-safety" href="file://///

is in the link. So I am guessing there is some server side safety validation of the link, that is not passing.  

<br />

My use case:  
Our build process puts a whats new html file on an internal server to be linked from the confluence page describing the various versions.  
But as this does not work, I have moved the whats new.html files to an externally facing server, so that I can use standard http: links that do work.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: What do you mean by "link to"?

If it's just a plain url (protocol://name) embeded in the text, then you wouldn't get "can't reach" errors from it, your browser would simply go to the location when the link is clicked. So what are you trying to do and how?

comments: author: UB Dehart
body: [@Nic Brough -Adaptavist-](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/781454) I'm trying to link from Confluence cloud to an internal location on our network (like a file share). I can't seem to find a way to link successfully to it. I've tried //networkshare/folder and I've also tried using fileshare.network.com with all of the different protocols. None seem to go to the internal file share location successfully. I can do URLs successfully to actual web apps, but not file shares.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: I am sorry but repeating "link to" does not explain what you mean.

Please can you tell me what this "link to" means? Is it a simple url as I mentioned earlier? Or are you inserting the url into something that is going to do something more clever than point the browser there?


author: UB Dehart
body: [@Nic Brough -Adaptavist-](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/781454) I'm trying to create a hyperlink or a shortcut link from the confluence cloud page to an internal network file share. I'm not sure how else to explain it. On my confluence page, I'm trying to link to a share that is in our internal network (//network share/shared folder). It is NOT always a URL - it's a folder on our network that was shared out. Nothing clever at all - link from Confluence page to an internal file share \& open that network folder location.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: That still does not explain it, I need to know what your link actually is.

But to try to get started, I will work off a guess and I assume that:

* the answer to my question "is it a plain url (prototocol://name)?" is "yes",
* what you are trying to achieve is a clickable bit of text on a page that, when clicked, takes you to another page or site

then there is a simple answer - you need to give Confluence a valid url in your text.

The editor will recognise valid urls and covert them to links automatically, or you can use "insert link" in the editor bar.

Your <http://somewhere.com> will work fine. If that format of link is giving you an error, then the page you have linked to either has a problem or simply isn't there. "Can't reach this page" means "there is nothing serving up data when I ask for the page" or "the network is not letting me get to the page"

File://somewhere.com will not work - it is not a valid url, because the protocol is not valid and Confluence will not recocgnise it as a link.

My guess is that you have a file store somewher thrown up with a unc link to it, hence the file::// protocol, but those are not urls (because they do not exist globally, they're relative to a domain - I have a unc link on this machine, and the files that are in the directory it points at are different, depending on whether I'm at home, in a coffee shop or in a certain office), so you cannot use them as links. Some browsers do support the file:// protocol, they'll try to open the location as though it is a file directory rather than a page.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud