Url: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/v…

I was helping a friend out this evening trying to get a simple GridView working with a HyperLinkField from a database result and we ran into an interesting security feature that people might run into:

If you add a HyperLinkField to a GridView’s Columns to allow a hyperlink in a column (pretty standard), it will create hyperlinks unless the URL starts with something other than http:// and https://.  In our case, his DB has an URL of:

FILE://\somemachine\someshare\somefile.txt

Because it was a full URL but didn’t start with http or https, it didn’t show the link. Change it to:

\somemachine\someshare\somefile.txt

If you’re interested, there was a Bug Report filed and MS explained why they did it:

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx?feedbackid=0400b837-db21-4828-90c7-4df607795501