Fixing pasted images and files

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As you plan to move content from your current website to your new ISU Site, your chosen method may be to copy and paste the content from one website to another. Generally, this method will work just fine for plain text.

However, there are a few extra steps required when moving images and files to your new website.

The standard copy and paste will not work for images and files. In this tutorial, we will explain how to move images and files to your new website, how to tell if your images and files will break, and how to fix them.

Images

Copying and pasting an image from another website to a new website may cause the image to break.

When you copy and paste an image from another website, it is only copying the link to the image. The image is still hosted on the other website. If that image is removed or that website is deleted, your image will break.

Pasting images can seem to work at first so it may be hard to know if an image has been moved properly. There is a way to see if an image has been pasted.

  1. Right click on the image and choose "Open Image in New Tab"
  2. Note the URL in the browser address bar. If it does not begin with your new website's name, it has not been properly uploaded.

How to prevent images from breaking

You must upload the image to your website with the image button in the editor toolbar.

How to download images from the old website

  1. If you know how to locate the file directory on your old website, the folder that contains the images that you need, then you can copy the images to your computer.
  2. If you do not know how to access the images on your old website, you can right-click on the image from your old webpage and save the image to your computer.

When you right click an image on a website, you can save the image.

Once you have the images saved to your computer, you can add them to your new website with the image button in the editor toolbar.

Files

Files are different from images. An image has the primary purpose of displaying a picture. A file has a primary purpose of being downloaded for someone to read. Examples of file extensions are .pdf, .ppt, .xlsx, .doc.

Copying and pasting a link to a file from another website to a new website may cause the file to break.

This is an example of a sentence that was copied and pasted from an old website to a new one. The sentence includes a link to a file hosted on the old website. At first, everything seems to be working properly because if you click the link, you can see the file.

A sentence with a link to a PDF.

However, the file link is still pointing to the old website. You can see this by opening the file in a new tab and checking the file URL in the browser address bar.

Right click to open the file link in a new window.

If the file URL does not begin with your new website's name, it has not been uploaded to your site and will break.

The file URL in the browser address bar.

How to prevent files from breaking

You must upload the file to your website with the file button in the editor toolbar.

  1. If you know how to locate the file directory on your old website, the folder that contains the files that you need, then you can copy the files to your computer.
  2. If you do not know how to access the files on your old website, you can right-click on the file link from your old webpage and save the file to your computer.

Once you have the files saved to your computer, you can add them to your new website with the editor toolbar.