unable to open file:/// link in sharepoint2013

Question

While working on a demo

I wanted to have some file links to a share. This might sound odd, as normally data is placed inside SharePoint and not in share. But it makes some sense in this case (content of share is managed by another application).

So i copied the the file url from explorer, post it in my web browser. Which translates all the spaces in the url to %20, to gain a valid url

I then took a List added url column, and posted that url into it.

The strange thing is while i can browse to that share using syntax file:/// url using firefox and Iexplorer once placed in the list it doesnt work anymore

Any ideas why ?.

Answer 1

My suggestion would to be to create a Content source and Result Source for the file share location and have it surface in Search Results.

If you want a custom view of the documents, you can use a Content Search Web Part to display the contents of the result source. Display Templates would help you in modifying the content view as needed.