How can you create a link to download a file?
Asked by Chris Rehberg:

Since the new Confluence Cloud editor update, many things have changed.

I type text, select it, hit the anchor button in the toolbar. The new dialogue only allows me to select pages, paste a web link or search for pages. Where is the option to specify the link should be for downloading a file, followed by a prompt for me to upload the file?


Answers:
author: Gerry James
body: I know this is an older post but I have not seen an actual resolution to the issue. I did find a bit of a work around that is kind of clunky but it works. Here is what I did

1. Add a File to the page (yes you will get the ugly box with un-needed text but it is a necessary evil for this fix)
2. Add the Attachments list Widget to the page (temporarily)
3. Find the attached file, right click, copy Link Address
4. Add the text that will contain the link to the downloadable file and add a Link using the address you copied above
5. Remove the Attachments List Widget if you wish

Once published, this will give you a link to a downloadable file.

Anyway, that was my work around. Would be nice to see this as a feature in the future.

comments: author: Jason Cobb
body: upvote for viable workaround. amazed that it had to come to this.  

At a technical level what we are missing is a fast way to inline a url link to download individual attachments from this entrypoint.  

<https://randomexample.atlassian.net/wiki/download/attachments/1234567890/attached.file?api=v2>  

Where the attachment id is resolved from the available files attached to the document.  

Instead of an icon that opens a preview of the file and forces extra clicks to actually download.


author: Darryl St_ Pierre
body: Chris,

I believe this is an outstanding To-do item for Atlassian. You may want to check out, and watch, this page: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html>

Darryl

comments: author: Chris Rehberg
body: It's not listed there. It says the link browser modal has changed and mentions the search algorithm. It also notes that links for anchors on the same page aren't yet done and that they will develop the ability to add links to images. But none of these addresses the ability to use text to link to a downloadable file. I've provided feedback on numerous occasions but with no reply from Atlassian.


author: Darryl St_ Pierre
body: Sorry, slightly misunderstood what you were trying to do.

If you drag and drop the file you want to make available, what do you want additionally that is not currently presented?


author: Chris Rehberg
body: Thanks Darryl.

Dragging and dropping leaves a square-shaped panel with undesirable text and unknown functionality. Clicking it (whilst editing) shows a checkmark. Clicking again removes the checkmark. It is unclear what this does.  

"All I want to do" (hint - any time a system user begins a sentence with those words, there's your software pain point right there) is convert my text into a link to download a file. This really is basic HTML 101 from 1992.

Below is an exact screenshot. I simply want the bullet point to be a clickable link allowing the user to download the word doc. I cannot achieve that in the new Confluence Cloud editor. If I drag and drop the file onto the page I get the panel you see below - ugly filename with central characters replaced by an elipsis, file size (totally irrelevant to my audience) and an icon. I don't want it to render as a panel. I simply want my text to be a clickable link. You can imagine how ugly this gets if I want to present, say, five bullet points linking to five different documents.

![snip.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/64243i57EB8A47DA500C63/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "snip.PNG")


author: Darryl St_ Pierre
body: LOL, "All I want to do" is the phrase of nightmares!

I feel your pain with some of the limitations of Confluence Cloud (though this may very well be a limitation in Confluence Server as well...). The closest I can see to getting the result you want is to use the Attachments macro.

You may want to search the Support site to see if there are any open feature requests for including files as links. If not, open one and reference the issue number here so it's available for others looking for the same thing.


author: Chris Rehberg
body: Thanks for the suggestion.

If I've done it correctly, I've raised a new bug ticket at the link below. As undocumented loss of functionality I consider it a bug.

<https://getsupport.atlassian.com/servicedesk/customer/portal/35/CA-780365>

EDIT: Atlassian replied and pointed me to an earlier ticket for much the same thing:

<https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67523>

Cheers.


author: Brooke
body: Thanks for sharing this. I was wondering the same thing. I definitely want to be able to link to downloadable content. I was surprised to find that changed with the new editor.


author: Chris Rehberg
body: I just found a workaround - if you still have a page that uses the old editor when you edit it, then if you copy that page (elipsis icon at top-right, then 'copy'), the new page will use the old editor too.


author: Chris Rehberg
body: Ok - so when I accidentally hovered over the icon showing a landscape painting (representing, imo, since the beginning of time, "insert image"), it popped up hover text saying "files and images".

So I found a button that let's me upload a file - but then it renders an ugly panel below the text I had selected. It hasn't generated an anchor link that my readers may use to download it.  

In other words - it's still an issue and the above hasn't really solved it.


Tags: confluence-cloud