Editing and formatting links

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Editing and formatting links

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You can edit link captions (the link text) directly just by clicking inside the links once and typing. You also have great freedom to format the appearance of your links. The link text can be formatted like normal text provided that you use the same formatting for all the text in the link.

 

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Hold down Ctrl and click on a link to navigate to the link target in your project. Double-click on a link to display its editing dialog.

Click to expand/collapseHow to edit link captions

You can edit link captions (the text of the link displayed in the editor) in exactly the same way you would edit normal text. Just click once inside the link or move the cursor into the link with the cursor keys and start typing.

Alternatively, you may find it easier to double-click on the link and edit its caption in the Hyperlink dialog.

Click to expand/collapseLink captions at the beginning of a paragraph

If a link caption is at the beginning of a paragraph you can't insert any text before it; all the text you type to the left of the link becomes part of the link. Here is how to solve this problem:

1.Click to the left of the link and press Enter to create a new paragraph.

2.Move up to the empty new paragraph, press the space bar (this switches off the link highlighting) then type some text.

3.Click to the right of the new text and press Delete to bring the link into the same paragraph.

Click to expand/collapseHow to format the link caption

Select the caption and format it in the same way you would format any other text. Always select the entire caption applying different formatting to different parts of the caption will split the link in two.

Note that underlining and color cannot be changed for normal links because they are always blue and underlined.

For full control over link caption formatting choose the Text style in the Link Properties dialog. You can then format the link manually or by applying a text style. (Double-click on a link in the editor to display this dialog.)

See the DHTML Examples tutorial project in My Documents\My HelpAndManual Projects\Examples for instructions on how to style your links with CSS in HTML-based output formats.

Click to expand/collapseTurning links back into text, deleting links, [****] links

Turn a link back into text right-click on the link and select Convert to plain text in the context menu.

To delete a link select the entire link and press Delete. It is best to select the spaces before and after the link, otherwise you may only delete the link caption and create a ghost link (a link without a caption).

If you create a ghost link it will be displayed as [****] in the editor after saving or refreshing the topic. To get rid of it just right-click on it and select Convert to plain text in the context menu.