SharePoint Wiki Links Can Do More

With SharePoint wiki links you can create links to pages that don't exist yet, and you can make a list item show up in a new window on top of the page with the wiki link. In a new Tips article about SharePoint wiki links I show how you can create and manipulate such links.

Only for the site
Wiki links can only open pages, libraries, lists or items inside the same SharePoint site. They cannot point to another site in the site collection or to something outside it. This means that you seldom can manage with only wiki links on a site.

Type in the syntax
Wiki links cannot be added to a SharePoint page via the Insert tab, Link button. Instead you have to open the SharePoint page in Edit mode and type in the link. Microsoft has made that easy by showing options, but you still have to know that you must start with double square brackets to get going, and there are no hints to what the use of the tab key can achieve.

Advantages that compensate
So, if wiki links are a bit more complicated to create than other links and only work within the site, why use them at all? The answer is that wiki links can do things that is difficult to accomplish with other methods.

Link to nothing
One of the wiki links advantages is the possibility to create a link to a page that has not yet been created. Such a link gets a dotted line under it, and when you click on this link you are asked if you want to create the page that the link points to. Such wiki links work as placeholders for future pages, so that you can show what will come without having to create all pages a once.

Open list item on top
Wiki links can open a list item in a new window on top of the page where you have clicked on the link. To achieve this, a wiki link is absolutely the best and easiest method. But you must be aware of how you select the list:

Go to the list you want to link to and use the TAB key when you select the list and then the item. When you just select the list with a mouse click, the link will be finished and you cannot select an item.

In the demo below I show more wiki links and describe how to manipulate what anchor text is displayed on the SharePoint page. This demo belongs to a series on SharePoint links, and you can find them all in the kalmstrom.com Tips section.

Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions