Adding a hotlink to an attribute field in QGIS

Question

How to add hotlink to QGIS? I saw this but had some problem. I want to open network location like \\fileserver\filefolder\file1.excel but it ends with error.

Edit: The network location is stored in a column of the table eg. URL column contains URL value for each attribute. Different row has different URL.

Answer 1

This way it works for me on Windows and Qgis 1.8.0:

Create a point shapefile with a field url of type string. Add a point and fill the url field with

\\<host>\<path>\<file>.xls 

without any blanks or quotation marks unless you have blanks in folder and filenames. Don't forget to save the layer, end leave edit mode.

In the layers properties, create a new action of type Generic , name it open and add

cmd /c [% "url" %] 

as action.

Select the Action icon, move the mouse over the point and click to open the excel sheet. The Excel sheet should have the standard .xls extension.

Answer 2

I'd use python. After reading a blog post from Tim Sutton at linfiniti [1] I learned you can use python in actions:

eg something along those lines:

from pywin32.client import Dispatch
xl = Dispatch('Excel.Application')
wb = xl.Workbooks.Open('C:\\Documents and Settings\\GradeBook.xls')

taken from another post [2]

[1] http://linfiniti.com/2012/03/a-python-layer-action-to-open-a-wikipedia-page-in-qgis/

[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/247724/how-can-i-launch-an-instance-of-an-application-using-python