Long URL Links Will Not Completely Copy

[kkathman]

What I did: Copied a very long URL from Apple Notes using Copy, then pasted the URL into a new Agenda note.

What happened: Only a small portion of the link was copied, the rest was dropped.

What I expected: The whole URL line woud be copied

Things that might be helpful to know (Agenda version, OS and model, etc): Latest Agenda, Latest High Sierra update on Mac with 32GB memory.

URL Copied from Apple Notes:

URL that was copied to Agenda in the Paste (Command-V):

store.360training.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/OrderItemAdd

[mekentosj]

This is the correct behaviour, we strip out all the messy query parameters from the url in the displayed url, while preserving them of course in the actual URL that is underneath so that when you click it you still get the same effect but it looks a lot better in your note (if you right-click the URL and choose edit link you should be able to confirm this).

[kkathman]

I should have been more clear and I apologize.

I have a client that is a reseller of products from a master site. The links to that site are, in fact quite long. So what I do is keep them in a repository. Until recently they were in Apple Notes, where I could easily call them up, copy them, and insert into websites as needed while also keeping them archived. SO, it’s not important at all for me to click on them in Agenda and execute them. IT IS critical that they be copied, in their entirety so that I can copy them and paste them. This is where Agenda fails. I’d like to ask that perhaps there be a setting in preferences whether you show the whole URL string or not.

Right now this is very critical in my business as is the storage of images in notes, both of which Agenda doesn’t have. Inline attachments really should have superseded other feature in my opinion. It’s really becoming harder and harder to compromise using the product right now when other products do these blocking and tackling kinds of things.

[mekentosj]

The trick then is to right/control-click the URL and choose Copy Link, this will ensure you get the entire link on the clipboard.

[mekentosj]

By the way, one thing that can happen with url shortening is that while you do end up with a much cleaner list, now all URLs are the same and you can’t easily discriminate between them. Then the techniques described here might be helpful: New Year's Resolution – Cleaning up your mailbox, open safari tabs, and dock - #10 by Laure

That way you go from a list with huge and incomprehensible urls:

http://some_huge_url.com/with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters
http://some_huge_url.com/with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters
http://some_huge_url.com/with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters

to something like this:
product 1
product 2
product 3

by typing:

[product 1](http://some_huge_url.com/with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters)
[product 2](http://some_huge_url.com/with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters)
[product 3](http://some_huge_url.com/with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters&with_loads_of_parameters)

[kkathman]

This does not work. I just tried it. It only copies the shortened link.

[kkathman]

Agreed this looks nicer, but the fact it the link doesn’t expand and I have to have that complete link to paste into websites.

[kkathman]

Here is the step by step of following your procedure…my results are in each screenshot:

1. Copy the original very long link:

2. Paste in Agenda Note

3. Now Copy Link in Agenda

4. Paste the Copied Link in Agenda and only the shortened version shows

[kkathman]

To be clear, I need for it to paste the WHOLE link. Ideally that last paste would go in an .<a href=“ “>. Statement so it can’t just paste the shortened link.

[mekentosj]

Hmm, that sounds like a bug then because It should copy the entire link, ill have a look

[mekentosj]

Hmm, strange, it does work for me in version 2.2.1, I assume you use this version too? Can you check for newly copied links? i.e. try copying one of those long links from the other source and paste it in agenda, then right click Copy Link, does it now work?

[kkathman]

Yes that’s exaclty what I did in my email back with those screen shots.

I had the URLS in Apple Notes. SO, what I did was highlighted the whole long link, right-clicked, clicked COPY. I brough up an Agenda Note, right-clicked and clicked PASTE. It was copied as the shortened link.

Then I clicked on the shortened link, right-clicked and chose Copy Link. I went back to Apple Notes, created a NEW Note, then clicked in that note, did I right-click and tapped Paste and only the shortened note was copied.

I have Agenda 2.1.1 not 2.2.1 though… when I check updates it says I have the latest version. I have the preferences set to Automatically check for releases an bata versions.

[mekentosj]

Thanks for confirming and you’re right, the latest is 2.1.1 not 2.2.1, my mistake. We’ll investigate, might be caused by a difference between pasting Rich Text vs Plain Text. Could you try if it makes a difference if you paste the link using Edit > Paste and Match Style?

[drewmccormack]

Just one thing I want to confirm: when you copy the link back to notes, you say it is still shortened. Do you mean the text you see is shortened, or do you mean the link itself is actually shortened, namely, that if you click it doesn’t work.

A link has two parts: the text you see; and the actual URL you go to when you click it. Obviously the text you see is shortened, but is the link also broken? When you click it, does it go where you think it should in Safari?

[kkathman]

Thank you both for looking into this.

I did try the “Paste and Match Style” and this did not change the result. While the pasted link IS clickable as an anchor, it does not show the full URL link and when you click “Copy Link” it only copies the anchor, not the URL link.

Drew, as a web designer for many years I understand anchors versus URL links. If you are only putting URL links in Notes, that’s a decision you’ve made as a developer, and perhaps that is a good thing for the majority of people that want “clickable” links in their notes. However, this absolutely does me no good as. developer. I realize that maybe we’re not your target market, but because we DO use this functionality so much, we’d have to choose to keep these URL links in something else other than Agenda. Right now they are in either Excel (for one site) and Apple Notes for the remainder of sites we do.

The proper HTML has to be filled it with the actual verbatim URL link because it’s going into an a href tag. When we work on web pages, with these links they have to be copied with the full URL, not a shortened version. The Copy Link functionality would be completely acceptable, as that’s what we normally use when copying from the source location (Excel or Apple Notes).

Perhaps a compromise here, would be to have Edit -> Paste Full URL Link and an Edit->Copy Full URL Link or something like that on the right-click dialog. I thought of making it a system preference, but there are times you DO want just the clickable anchor to be displayed and maybe even make that the default.

For the record, Apple Notes and Bear both support the full URL with Copy Link capability. I only bring that up because part of your target audience for your product will be those coming from Evernote, Apple Notes and other, similar products and, like me, they would be used to that functionality.

[kkathman]

I did a little playing around just now and found at least a work around.

So it turns out that if the link (say in Apple Notes) fails the process IF that URL is in Apple Notes as a LINK (i.e. you click on it and it goes to the target. IF, however, you remove the link and leave ONLY the textual link, you can copy it and paste it in Agenda, just fine BUT there’s a caveat!!!

If you remove the link (say in Apple Notes), highlight it, and then choose the typical Right-click and COPY, the note will paste into Agenda as JUST the short anchor.

If you remove the link, highlight it and press Cmd+C, however, when you go to paste it in Agenda (Using right-click, Paste), the whole textual content of the URL is copied. Any variation of this causes JUST the shortened version to be copied (I.e. if you attempt to to.a cmd-V for instance).

Go figure that1. I give up trying to figure that all out!

PS - Never mind on this. Turns out it’s just inconsistent. Sometimes it pastes short and sometimes it pastes the whole thing. Can’r seem to find a rhyme or reason.

[drewmccormack]

If I understand this properly, it is copying the link correctly. That is, you can click the link in your other program, and it will go to the right place. Is that correct?

In terms of copying links out of Agenda, have you tried using the “Copy as Markdown” feature. The will include both the text the link is attached to, as well as the URL it is pointing at.

[kkathman]

HI Drew:

For me, this has been very frustrating because every time I do this procedure, the results are different.

The “normal” procedure that I use with Apple Notes, Bear and any other solution, is this the following: (assuming that I have my HTML code up in a nearby window):

1. Open or go to Apple Notes and navigate to the note that has all of the links listed in their entirety.

2. Right-click anywhere in the URL link to get the dialog.

3. Choose “Copy Link”

4. Focus to my code window, and hit cmd-V to paste the entire URL in the code.

I do this dozens of times a week.

What I’ve relayed is that when you paste the link out of Agenda it’s inconsistent in what it actually spits out. Sometimes it puts the short link and sometimes it puts the entire thing. Inside of Agenda, it always pastes the short link no matter where the link was copied from. And, if you play with it long enough, you’ll find that there is a difference, at times, betwen hitting cmd-v to paste versus right-clicking and choosing “Paste”. That should never be the case.

I finally was able to get the full textual URL into Agenda, but it wasn’t easy. What I had to do was remove the links from my source (Apple Notes) then do a straight text copy to Agenda. Even then, it only worked about half the time, with Agenda detecting that the pasted text was a link and spitting it back as a shortened snip. If it did that I just erased it and tried to paste again using the dialog Paste and it worked. It was just plain inconsistent. That’s VERY frustrating.

I invite you to explore this just using Apple Notes and Agenda and you’ll see what I mean.

I realize that what you’re going for is that the copied link is clickable. That’s fine and probably it should. I DO NOT like the implementation of this shortened link at all in ANY way. Sell it as a feature, if you want, it’s a misrepresentation of what I’m trying to copy.

The good news, I suppose, is that once I WAS able to get the URL links into Agenda properly, it’s now OK. Now, when I click “Copy Link” and try to paste that into another app, the whole thing copies just fine. Here’s what it looks like now in Agenda (which it what it SHOULD look like I believe):

[drewmccormack]

What I think is happening here is this: the app where you copy puts as many representations of the data as it can think of on the clipboard. Agenda puts a URL entry, but also a rich text piece of text with the link property applied, just as it appears in Agenda. This link is correct, in the sense that the attached URL is correct.

When you paste, the app receiving the paste decides itself what it wants from the clipboard. It seems that what is probably happening is that your HTML app is seeing the rich text and saying, I’ll take text. But it isn’t taking the rich text with the link, because it is a plain text editor, so it is just taking the actual anchor text and ignoring the URL attached to it.

The difficulty here is that Agenda has no control over what the receiver chooses. We could put less data on the clipboard, but that would be silly in other cases. Eg. You have the word “horses” as anchor, and you have a link attached to “http://horses.com”. You copy that into Notes. You would probably want the word “horses” to appear with the link attached. That would not be possible if we didn’t put the rich text on the clipboard.

So what works well for one app works less well for another. In your case, having the exact link as text is important. What I recommend then is that you ensure that is exactly what you have in Agenda. If I were you, I would use the preformatted paragraph style, and paste into that. Links are not parsed or changed in that style (same for fixed width).

The downside of this is that you can’t click the link, but you at least have the exact URL. If you want both a clickable link, and the original URL, I think you have two good options:

1. Paste the link twice into Agenda, once as a link (shortened), and again with fixed width formatting…or…
2. Paste the link into Agenda as a shortened link. When you want to copy the URL to a HTML app, choose the Edit link option, and copy the URL out of the box that appears, rather than copying the text directly.

Hope that helps.
Kind regards,
Drew

[kkathman]

Aha…This would explain a lot of the behavior. My tests were usually between Apple Notes and Agenda. At times I would go to the shortened note in Agenda, rt-click and do Copy Link, and then cmd-v into Apple Notes and get the shortened link only But immediaelely I’d press the rt-click and hit “Paste” and get the WHOLE link. Now it makes sense.

In fact that’s how I got the long links into Agenda to begin with. To get the exact textual, long link into Agenda to stay, I had to make sure that the source text in Apple Notes was NOT a link, but just a textual string. Then I did a straight COPY. When I did this and pasted it into Agenda, it went into Agend as a long, textual string. Agenda DID automatically make it a link, though. However I can now rt-click and COPY or COPY LINK either one and it pastes the whole URL string in any destination.

By the way, you CAN click the link in Agenda unlike you thought. In fact, there is NO way to keep Agenda from NOT making a link out of text that’s formatted as such. You can easily verify this by typing in www.horses.com into Apple Notes. It will make it a link automatically. Now highlight it, right-click, and REMOVE LINK. Now you got www.horses.com as a plain text and in Apple Notes you won’t be able to click it. Now, copy that plain text and put it in Agenda. It will be automatically rendered as a link, fully clickable.