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8 <h1>File links in JabRef</h1>
10 <p>JabRef lets you link up your
11 entries with files of any type stored on your system, as well
12 as links to the document on the web in the form of an URL or a
13 DOI identifier. Each entry can have an arbitrary number of file
14 links, and each linked file can be opened quickly from JabRef.</p>
16 <p>In BibTeX terms, the file links of an entry are encoded in a
17 single field. However, from within JabRef they appear as an
18 editable list of links accessed from the entry editor along
19 with other BibTeX fields.</p>
21 <h2>Setting up external file types</h2>
23 <p>For each file link, a
24 file type must be chosen, to determine what icon should be used
25 and what application should be called to open the file. The
26 list of file types can be viewed and edited by choosing
27 <b>Options -> Manage external file types</b>, or by clicking
28 the <b>Manage external file types</b> button in the <b>External
29 programs</b> tab of the Preferences dialog.</p>
31 <p>A file type is specified by its name, a graphical icon, a
32 file extension and an application to view the files. On
33 Windows, the name of the application can be omitted in order to
34 use Window's default viewer instead.</p>
36 <h2>Adding external links to an entry</h2>
38 <p>If the "file" field
39 is included in <a href="GeneralFields.html">General fields</a>,
40 you can edit the list of external links for an entry in the
41 <a href="EntryEditorHelp.html">Entry editor</a>. The editor
42 includes buttons for inserting, editing and removing links, as
43 well as buttons for reordering the list of links.</p>
45 <p>If you have a file within or below your file directory (set
46 up in <b>Preferences -> External programs -> External
47 file links -> Main file directory</b>) with an extension
48 matching one of the defined external file types, and a name
49 containing a BibTeX entry's BibTeX key, the file can be
50 autolinked by clicking on the <b>Auto</b> button in the entry
51 editor. The rules for which file names can be autolinked to a
52 BibTeX key can be set up in <b>Preferences -> External
53 programs -> External file links -> Use regular expression
56 <p>If you want to download a file and link to it from a BibTeX
57 entry, you can do this by clicking the <b>Download</b> button
58 in the entry editor. A dialog box will appear, prompting you to
59 enter the URL. The file will be downloaded to your main file
60 directory, named based on the entry's BibTeX key, and finally
61 linked from the entry.</p>
63 <h2>Opening external files</h2>
65 <p>There are several ways to open
66 an external file or web page. In the entry table you can select
67 an entry and use the menu choice, keyboard shortcut or the
68 right-click menu to open an entry's first external link.
69 Alternatively, if the entry table is set up to show the
70 <b>file</b> column (set up in <b>Preferences -> Entry table
71 -> Special table columns -> Show file column</b>), you
72 can click on the file icon to open an entry's first link. To
73 access any of an entry's links, click on the icon with the
74 right mouse button (or <b>Ctrl-click</b> on Max OS X) to bring
75 up a menu showing all links.</p>