Add Files
If you need to add multiple files, it's best to add them all at once. See Upload Multiple Files for more information.
While editing your page's content you can use the "Add media" in Drupal 7 or the "Insert from Media Library" in Drupal 8/9+ buttons in your page's editor menu to upload files just like you would when uploading an image.
In Drupal 7 if you want to add a file when not on an editor page you can click on Manage Files in the Admin menu in the gray bar at the top of your page.
Click on the + Add file link located below the Content title at the top left of the page.
In Drupal 8/9+ versions the add files will be under the top menu bar "Shortcuts" and then you will click the "Add media" button.
In both versions of Drupal clicking the "Add files" (Drupal 7) or "Add media" (Drupal 8/9+) will give you the same screen that appears in the pop-up box when you are adding a file or image while creating a page. However, you will only have to click Upload and Next and the file will be added.
Link to Files
To add a link to a file after the file has been added to the library, go to the page you want to add the file and click on edit to edit that page. Using the Drupal Content Editor, go into the body copy and highlight the text you want to link to the file. Click on the link with the plus mark on the right-hand side of the toolbar.
NOTE: You should never use the "media" options to link to your file as Drupal will try to treat it like an image instead of a file which can cause various display issues. Always use the URL linking options.
In Drupal 8/9+ versions, this will be the link button on the left side of the editor bar that looks like this:
In Drupal 7 versions, this will be a button on the right which looks like this:
This will give you a pop-up menu that appears when adding a link. Drupal 7 versions look like this:
In Drupal 8/9+ versions, the box will look like this:
To add a link to a previously uploaded file:
- Type the name of the file in the Search for content box
- When the file you want to link to appears, click on it and it will automatically fill in the Link URL for that file.
- Click the Insert link button and the text will be linked to the file you selected.
In Drupal 8/9+ versions, this search will look like this:
NOTE: When you are linking to a file there is no way to control how a linked file functions for your users as that is something controlled by their browser. As an example, when the user clicks a PDF link we cannot force their browser to always download the PDF or to always have the PDF open in the same page.
Upload Multiple Files
On the Add File page, click the Archive link located at the top right of the page under the UPLOAD tab.
- Click on the Browse button and find the compressed file folder that you want to add to your site.
NOTE: The only compressed file formats that can currently be uploaded are .zip, .tar, . tgz, .gz, and .bz2. - The best practice is to only have just the files you want to upload in your compressed file. Although, should you need to single out a specific type of file to upload you can do so in the Pattern text field box. Type .* followed by the file type you want to batch upload. .*jpg for example, would cause only jpg images to be batch uploaded. However, it is strongly recommended that your compressed folder contain only the files you want to batch upload as it will make the process much easier for you.
- After clicking the Submit button on the Archive upload page, it will process your compressed folder file and upload it to your site. It will automatically take you to the main Content page and a green banner will appear at the top of the page with a successful upload message. In the example below the message is: Extracted test-zip.zip and added 3 new files.
Change Multiple Files
- Occasionally you may need to make updates to several files at the same time.
- From the Files page, you can check the boxes to the left of the files that need updating.
- Select the relevant choice from the UPDATE OPTIONS dropdown menu.
- The most commonly used choice is the Delete selected files option which will, as it states, delete the files.
NOTE: There is no undo button for these updates so make sure you really want to choose that update option.
- You are very unlikely to use any of the other three options, and unless you know what you are doing, it is not recommended to use them.