How to create Hyperlink to video file in Calc

[AlexH1]

On my windows system I have an Open Office calc spreadsheet containing hyperlinks to all my disk dvds and avi files.

When I click on the link the file / dvd is opened by VLC media player

Is it possible to do this in LibreOffice on my ubuntu linux system?

At the moment the files try to open in Firefox

[LKeithJordan]

My answer is based on a lot of experience with DOS and Windows, and a little experience with Linux (I recently created a bootable persistent USB drive containing Linux Mint 17.2 with Cinnamon and I’ve had a limited amount of time to experiment and learn).

The short answer is “you should be able to do what you ask – but only with modification.” The explanation for how to do what you ask is a bit longer, and I don’t have Linux booted to give you specifics so I’m going to talk in generalities (and even if I did have Linux booted, my flash drive setup may not give exactly the same link reference as your hard drive setup).

Your Windows OS recognizes that the links you have in your Calc spreadsheet refer to your local drive so it opens Windows Explorer. These same links are not translating well on Linux (a completely different OS), and that’s why the system is opening the Internet browser (Firefox). In essence, the system doesn’t recognize the reference as local, so it figures the reference MUST be external (Internet).

Try this:

1. Open the local browser window in Linux and move within your filing system to find one of the files you require.
   
2. As I recall, you can toggle between views to see the actual path to the folder and file. Do that.
   
3. Copy the path and paste it into a txt file so you can examine it. The structure you see will be the Linux file structure.
   
4. Once you understand what Linux requires, replace the Calc links with the new links (or preferably create a new set of links for cross-platform compatibility).

FYI, I did a quick search and found a pretty good discussion on mozilla.org of file URL and Windows/Mac/Linux operating systems. After I scanned it, I almost erased most of my response and just gave you the link – then I decided you might benefit from both my answer and the link so I included them both.

One thing I noticed quickly is that the Windows drive letter designation (“C:” ) is not used in either Mac or Linux. I’m sure this is affecting your situation. Also, depending on whether you are using the local Windows file path or the URI, the slashes may be running in the opposite direction.

This got me curious, so I did a bit more poking around on Google. I found this excellent discussion that explains a lot to Linux newbies like me.

I really think reading these artilces would help you.