Adding Pictures to Auto Links

Auto Links is a utility for quickly and easily creating a large number of links in your publication. One downside however, is that it allows slightly fewer customization options when compared to the standard tools used to create individual links. This tutorial will detail how to access those settings for use with automatically created links.

Some useful things can be accomplished in this way:
  - Alter all link boxes in a specific way, such as increasing or decreasing their size.
  - Add image or "call to actions" to your links.
  - Change plain external links to light box links instead.

Note: In the example that follows, we will show you how to apply an image call to action to all links. The same method can be used for other alterations, however.



1) First, choose any link and set it up in the manner you want them all to look or function. In this case we've added an image using the "external source" drop-down menu. If you wanted to change the link to a light box link, you would instead use the 'Target' drop-down menu to select 'Lightbox'.



Note that the "external source" above is an image which was previously uploaded to the Media folder in Publicator.

2) Secondly, export all links to CSV, using the window menu (see below). After you have done so, you will get a "Save File" prompt that will allow you to choose a location to save the CSV to your local disk.



3) Next, open the file up in Excel. The file is currently pretty unreadable, so start by performing a Text-to-Columns operation, as demonstrated in the screenshot below:



4) Now things should be more presentable. You will see that one of the rows is different from the rest. This is the individual link you changed in step 1. In our example, the differences for an image link are shown; if you chose to alter the link type, that would be seen in the 'Target' column instead.



Using copy (CTRL+C) and paste (CTRL+V), change the rest of the values in the differing columns (width, height, opacity, and external source in this case) to match the 'different' row. (Tip: The fastest way to accomplish this is to change several values, and then copy the whole block that has been changed. Then you can start pasting the larger block instead of just a single value at a time.) It should look like this when finished:



Save this file (CTRL+S), and click 'Yes' when asked whether to remain in CSV format. Return to the Zmags Enriched platform now.

5) Use the "Import/Export Links" window to re-import the newly updated CSV file, as demonstrated in the screenshot below:



If the CSV is able to import successfully, flip through a few pages with the arrow > button and ensure the links are there. Click "place links on page" and take a look at them to ensure they are correct. After you have confirmed this, remove the old links from the publication by clicking 'File', 'Delete', "All Links" and wait for the Enriched Tools to reload.

After that's done, re-import the CSV file using the procedure outlined in the screenshot above. Once the CSV is imported, simply re-add the newly updated links to all pages by clicking the "Place all links" button. Your links should now all have the appearance you set up in step 1!



Note: This article utilizes high-resolution images. If you are having trouble reading the text parts of images, use the 'Zoom' feature of your web browser by pressing CTRL and the plus (+) symbol together. You can return to normal later by pressing CTRL and zero (0) together. What are the best dimensions for a popup image or media file?

When uploading an image to our system for usage as a popup we recommend using the dimensions of 315 by 220 pixels.