Inserting Hyperlinks - Division of Information Technology

Using Hyperlinks in Email instead of attachments

Introduction

Why use Hyperlinks?

As you can imagine, the amount of email generated each day within the university is considerable so to save space and relieve the pressure on the mail server, if all documents were saved on the university’s shared drive and a hyperlink was sent to them instead of the document itself being forwarded a considerable amount of file space would be freed up.
You may not realise the impact your attachments are having on the University, or the resources they are using, not to mention the impact they could have on the recipients.

Disadvantages of sending attachments

Sending attachments uses up significant space on the University’s mail server. Each 5mb attachment which is sent to a staff member at the University takes up 10 mb on the server. 5mb in the ‘Sent’ box of the person who sent the message and 5mb in the “Inbox’ of the person who receives the message.
If the message is sent to 10 people with the attachment then it will be taking up 55 mb of space. And this is just one email.
An attachment could put a recipient over their email quota, or their inbox could be full meaning they would not receive the message

Advantages of using Hyperlinks

Quick and easy to use
Saves space on the University mail server
Saves space on the recipients email folders
Saves space on the sender’s email folder (Sent items)

Inserting a hyperlink

There are a couple of methods you can use to hyperlink a document within an email message. These are:

Email the file path

The first of these is to copy the ‘file path’ where the document is situated and send it to the recipient in an email. To copy the file path follow these steps:

Using ‘Windows explorer’, navigate to where the file is being stored on the University’s (shared) drive
Highlight the file path in the ‘Address’ bar at the top of the window
Either right click and choose ‘Copy’, or choose the ‘Edit’ drop-down menu and select ‘Copy’
Create a new email message to the recipient and ‘Paste’ the hyperlink in to the body of the message by using ‘right click, paste’ option
Make sure you press the ‘Enter’ button after you have pasted in the ‘hyperlink’ to activate it, it will turn blue
Send your message as normal

Insert a ‘Hyperlink’

The second method you can use is to utilise the Microsoft outlook ‘Hyperlink’ feature. Follow these steps:

Create a new email message to the recipient
Highlight the word you wish to use as your ‘hyperlink’ (for instance you may type the sentence ‘Click here to open the document’) and you would then highlight the word ‘here’
Click on the ‘Insert’ tab at the top of the Outlook message window
Select ‘Hyperlink’
The ‘Insert Hyperlink’ window will open and you can navigate to wherever your file is kept
Click on the file you wish to include in your email
Click on OK
The word you have chosen as your ‘Hyperlink’ will now be highlighted in blue in your message and if you run your mouse across it you will see the details of the hyperlink appear. See below:

image of hyperlink text

Send your message as normal

Be aware when inserting a hyperlink

You need to be sure that the recipient of any message which includes a hyperlink has access to the area of the shared drive where the file is stored, otherwise it is useless to send them the hyperlink because they will be unable to open the document.
If you need to send a hyperlink to a document on an inaccessible area of the shared drive, save a copy of the document on S: common and it will then be accessible.