links suddenly stopped working
 

So for years and years I have been sending out a newsletter that is thick with links.
Hundreds of them.

I maintain a site that lists talks in the Boston area. The URL for it is http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com. If I enter that URL into my browser and
click on the links in the text they work.

Once a week I send subscribers a list of talks scheduled for the next week. When
I send myself a copy of that weekly list none of the links work. These is new behavior. I have no idea what is going on. Perhaps I am not describing it properly. I would be very grateful for thoughts. Please bear in mind that I am not a technical person and so
am forced to ask for a pretty basic level of exposition.

Fred

Fastmail have recently updated the User Interface so perhaps that has something to do with it.

Perhaps you have to tick the box in your settings to show external images or what ever they call it.

It seems weirder than that. Again, when I call up the lecture list file from within the browser
the links work; when I click on the URL of my site and access the links that way they work. When I send myself mail with URLs in the text -- www.ibm.com -- the links work. But when
I copy part of the lectures list and send it to myself in email the links do not work. Perhaps something weird with html. If you have an experiment to suggest please do so.

The problem seems confined to .html and .htm files that I send myself. When I mail myself a *.htm file and then click on it the screen turns white. If it is a .html file nothing happens. But my sample size is pretty small.

Do you mean that if you copy a sentence/paragraph (for example: The URL for it is http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com. If I enter that URL into my browser and
click on the links in the text they work.), and paste that into an e-mail the link doesn't work?

I just tried that in my FastMail - pasted the text quoted example into an e-mail then highlighted the URL in that pasted text and clicked on the LINK icon and it was converted to a link (underlined and in blue).

Where is the LINK icon??

Fred

Doesn't work for the application I have in mind. Still, it's interesting.
Thanks.

My application is this: I have a website that lists the science
lectures in the Boston area. I present the lectures in a format
that includes lots of links. Once a week I copy the lectures
that are to be given over the next eight days and send that list
out as an attached file to subscribers who prefer "push".

The problem is that something about the latter process is turning
off the links. This is a new development.

To repeat: If I write a file containing this text: "<a
href="http://www.ibm.com">IBM</a>," store it locally, and then
call it up from inside my system, with my browser, the link works
fine. If I mail the file to myself as plaintext the link seems
to work then as well. But if I mail it to myself as an attachment
the link fails.

What can I do to make links sent as attachments functional?


Fred Hapgood

So, as I understand it, the problem is not with the e-mail itself, it's the links within an attachment to an e-mail.

What format is the attachment: Word document, PDF, etc?

Html
Html

Perhaps I should just give up on raw HTML and find an app that converts HTML to PDF.

You're creating a document (file) and then saving it as a html file?

Why?

That seems a strange way to go about it.

If you insist on an HTML file why not put the file in your file storage, make it accessible as a web page, then send your contacts the link to that page.

Yes. I do exactly that with the website version of the list. But some people seem to prefer a more pushy form of delivery, one that looks ahead only a week. (In these seasons a full month of sessions runs on for quite a distance.)

I recognize that the line is a bit blurry. I could build two web pages -- a monthly that has all the talks, with all the links, and a second that lists just the talks (and links) for the next week. Then every week I would send subscribers a link to the weekly site. Seems perfectly doable.

Still, I would (marginally) prefer doing it the way I have been doing it. But that might not be possible.

I have a hobby website that I host exclusively in my FastMail file storage.

There are various web pages (in HMTL format), and there are also links to PDF's also stored in same way.

For example:

https://walkingdeadmaps.com/GPS-Co-o...able-Links.pdf

This starts life as a spreadsheet with links to Google Maps, that is then exported as a PDF file, and uploaded to my file storage.

That way the file cannot be changed by anyone else, the links are easily accessible, and the PDF can be printed for anyone wanting a hard copy of the info.

That could also work for you.

Have you tried pasting the HTML mark-up directly into the e-mail rather than attaching it as separate file?
I'm no expert but I think that's how I'd go about it.

Yeah. Doesn't display. That is, displays as code and not as whatever the term is for the look that code is supposed to generate.

Thanks for the thought.