Link Attachments

To supplement the basic structure and step-by-step procedures provided by your module, section, and topic documents, you link from these documents to attachments. Attachments can be package files, web pages, or URLs.

You can link from your outlines to an attachment at the following three levels:

The concept of a module, section, or topic
A frame of a topic
Bubble text in a topic frame, including Introduction and End frames

You can link to attachments while working in the Outline Editor (concepts only) or Topic Editor.

Once you have created a link from a document to an attachment, the link essentially becomes part of the parent document. As a result, you do not need to re-create or repair these links every time you move or reuse the parent document in your outlines. Links are also maintained if you move or copy the parent document in the Library.

The procedure for linking to an attachment at a given level is the same, regardless of the type of attachment. When you link to an attachment from a topic frame, you also select an icon that appears during topic playback in the Player to alert the user to the presence of a link and provide access to the linked information. You can also assign a tooltip to the link, for example, to provide a brief description of the linked attachment.

networking icon Multi-user Considerations

Before you can perform this action, you must check out the parent document. After you save any changes, you should check in the parent document to make it available to other authors and add the changes to the Developer's version control system.

You do not need to check out the attachment, only the parent document. In addition, you can link to an attachment even if it is checked out to another user.

When you are working offline, you can link to an attachment only if it is available in your local cache. Therefore, if you plan to work offline, you should ensure that you have a local copy of any attachment to which you want to link. To do this, you can either check out or get the attachment(s), depending on whether you plan to edit them or to have access to read-only copies. If you go offline and do not have copies of some attachments in your local cache, those attachments will be unavailable to you as you work offline. To remedy this, you need to go back online and get the documents that you need.