How to share local network links with team messenger?

Question

I'm working in advertising agency, and we often need to share local links within Windows 8 and 10 network. Files are big, so you can't attach them to messages.

For communication we use slack and Skype, but the problem is that click on link like

\\SERVER\path\to\some\folder

nothing happens. Parser inside mesenger understands that it is link, higlights it, but doesn't open it.

Workflow now looks like Shift + Right click on file → copy as path → paste to Skype → copy from Skype to Windows explorer → remove "" from path → open file

when you do it 20 times a day it's frustrating.

Can you suggest more convenient way to share links with other team members?

Answer 1

It should be in the format

file://server/folder/file.ext

That's two slashes at the beginning. So you need to convert backslashes to forward slashes, and escape any non-URL-allowed characters (e.g. space -> %20).

To make this easier, I use SendTo Toys, and set the following options:

Bear in mind that this will create a link, and allow you to copy it, but clicking it to open may not work, due to security settings on your PC.

Answer 2

It's a little embarrassing to admit that with experimentation I have discovered that there is a fairly simple workaround for the issue.

If the last stanza of the URI is broken - include a dir slash after it.

For the example:

\server\share name\second stanza\thirdstanza\fourth stanza

We only need ping

\server\share name\second stanza\thirdstanza\fourth stanza\

It works for me when sending folder names. Please try it in your applications.