Wiki Linking in SharePoint 2010
Wiki Linking is a great new user interface feature that allows users to quickly and easily link to pages, items and other content without the need to actually leave the page to find the link.
There is plenty of things that you can link to which makes it really easy to use and a fantastic addition to the new WCM functionality of SharePoint 2010 
Limitations
- Wiki Linking will not work within Content Editor Web Parts!
Basics
[[ and Ctrl+Space are your best friend!
First thing is first. Wiki Linking works on both publishing and wiki pages so don't worry about that . To get wiki linking to work you simply type in '[[' into a text field and you will be presented with something that looks like the following:
Wiki Linking View
So what does this mean?
- Excel, Home and How To Use This Library: are all pages from the pages library within this site. They will always be on top since the idea is to be able to link to pages easily.
- List: This is to start looking for Lists or List Items that you want to link to
- View: This is to start looking for Views to link to.
So far so good. Now if we want to see what are options are for Lists for instance we can simply press the down arrow, wait till List is highlighted and then press TAB to see the options available, like below. This will show us all of the lists that are available on the Site Collection that we can link to.
Viewing all lists to link to
So lets go through some scenarios:
Linking to a list or library
To link to the main page of a document library or list its really easy. Simply put in your ‘[[' backets, choose list, choose the list that you want to link to and type in a ']]‘ after the slash like below:
Linking to a list or library
This will create a link to the AllItems.aspx page for that list or library.
Linking to a view of a list or library
This is pretty cool, you can also link to a view of a list or library which is neat. So say that we want to link to the barCode view on the Shared Documents library in our site. Simply start off with the ‘[[' character, this time select 'View', select the document library you want to use (in our case Shared Documents) and then the view (in our case barCode view).
Finish off with the ']]‘ and you have a link to a view!
Linking to a view
Linking to an item
So this is what most users want to do, link to an item. Unlike MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 where there was this long process to go through now we can easily link to an item and there is a great interface that lets you see the items that you link to.
So lets say that we want to link to a document stored in the Shared Documents library, in a folder called Reports. The document is called Policy Usage Report.5.3.2010 3.43.54 PM.xml.
So once again you have to start with the ‘[[' character, then 'List' and press TAB, then 'Shared Documents', then 'Reports' which is the name of the our folder and then then the name of the document. Press tab, insert a ']]‘ character and we have our link! It’s an awesome user experience to be able to navigate through all items and folders.
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How to change the name of the link
Usually you want to have an alternative name rather than the title of the item as the link. To do this its pretty much the standard wiki way. Simply insert a ‘|‘ character, type in the text that you would like to see and finish it off with the ever present ‘]]‘ characters!
Link Text
So some really great new features making things much easier for content authors and users in general!
Remember!
If you start to get angry with the linking try hitting CTRL+SPACE or add the brackets again!
Category: General
I have got a links list and when I want to create a link to this list in my wiki I need to to something like:
[[List:Links/2]], where 2 is the ID of an item in the list. I would like to use something else than the ID as a reference. Is there such a possibility?
Thanks,
Hey Zbigniew,
I don’t think that you can use anything else apart for the ID after having a look at the Javascript.
If you like you could write your own JQuery to modify this but it would be quite a task.
Thanks for you reply.
I’ll stay with the IDs for the moment
Is there an easy way to link into sub sites this way? That is, easily find the pages, lists, documents from a site that lives under the main site?
Hi Ivy,
Unfortunately not, it seems that Wiki Linking is only applicable to the current site which is unfortunate.
If I find out anything I will let you know.
Cheers
Is there a way to wiki linking for SharePoint users. So it displays the user name and when i click on it has to take me to profile page.
Hey Guru,
Not that I know of, sorry!
Anybody know how to add a link to a section of the current Wiki page, for example the top of the page?
Sorry if my question is stupid… First-time user.
First of all: Well done, Sir. This blog is very helpful.
Ontopic:
I’d really like to use this feature. The problem is i can’t link to any items in my document library, only the document library itself. Is there anything else i have to enable to be able to use that feature? I noticed that you can specify columns for indexing under the document library settings. I tried that, but with no effect.
Note: I’m working with the SP Foundation 2010 edition, not the enterprise edition.
Hey Chrissi!
No this is not a silly question at all, have your tried creating an anchor link using the link functionality in the ribbon? It should do the trick.
Hey BP!
Interesting I wonder if this is a limitation of Foundation but I wouldn’t think so.
There shouldn’t be anything that you have to configure to make this happen.
Let me have a look into it to see if there is anything else that I can find.
Thanks so far for this great introduction.
My problem: If I enter “[[” the popup always says “list not found”. This is new to me since this was working weeks ago. What is wrong? Thx for any suggestions.
Hey KayLe!
Hmm that is weird, let me find out the webservice that the javascript is calling to see if it might help determine the cause.
Michal,
You wrote: “have your tried creating an anchor link using the link functionality in the ribbon?”
When I try to insert a link I only see the field “text to display”and “adress”
How to add a anchor?
Note: The #anchor does work if the anchor is set. But I have to edit the HTML to do so and my users will not like doing this…
Hey Ludwig,
You are right it is a bit confusing. I am going to do a blog post on it soon.
Cheers