@Erica - I must add that - by taking more time upfront (hours if necessary) to define an organizational structure, one comes to appreciate the usefulness of folders and documents.
Of course, auto-updating internal links will always be very useful because it is guaranteed that the even the most thought-out structure will change in the future.
So when you move a bullet to another document, the URL for the bullet changes as it must contain the ID of the new document.
Solutions would be then to either:
Identify bullets by their own ID, search where that bullet is listed, then show that doc+bullet, or
in the database, but invisible in the UI, keep a redirect to the new location place and forward to that
The first might be more expensive search-wise, although you could work around it with 1) look for it the regular way, 2) if not available, then do a lookup for elsewhere
The second could be very expensive storage wise as you keep on having things that move around
This might be an old conversation, but I think it would be great functionality. As part of diving into Dynalist, I’m attempting to manage notes similar to a wiki and running into this issue. Often, the bullet needs to be moved in some way, indented to add a higher category, or moved to a different subject. At that point, all links to the bullet are broken.
I’m going to throw some ideas out there, they may be completely off-base but based on what @ruud responded:
Moving bullets around documents should NOT break internal links… Otherwise users are forced to choose between secure links, but single document structure OR better structure with documents and folders AND broken links whenever they have to move things around. NOT good.
Also, cutting and pasting even on the same document breaks links AND changes creation date. Also NOT good.
Hello everyone 
Can you please confirm that this has been resolved?
Can you confim that links between items won’t be broken if I move items between documents and folders, no matter how I do it (cut-paste or click-move)?
I don’t seem to encounter the problem but, as I will rely heavily on folders and documents, it’s important for me to know I’m not building my house on quicksand.
thank you
A quick test reveals that this has not been resolved. Moving a link target within a document (using the Move Item command) does not break links to the target. Moving a link target to another document (using the Move Item command), or cutting and pasting the target (into the same or a different document), breaks all links to the target.
Yes encounter this issue myself after recently moving into using more documents and folders. Would love to be able to preserve the links after moving into different documents!
This is why I dont use links but tags.
Is there a feature request for this in Trello, so that I can upvote it? I couldn’t find one perusing through.
While there are other features that sound way more interesting to me, this seems like something that just needs to get fixed…how many people have shot themselves in the foot by not understanding or remembering that this is how links work in Dynalist? I just ran into a huge headache with this because I (again) forgot that links break when moving a node between documents. I link into Dynalist from other tools, so the problem grows exponentially as more and more links break…
Big Dynalist fan, for months now, and I’ve widely evangelized it, but this may be the hill my usage dies on, alas … It’s a veritable bug that links to an item aren’t preserved when the referenced item gets moved to another document. This all but shocked me. Links are a sort of data we log – data that quietly gets lost when we relocate an item, such that there’s no way to tell what we linked to originally, because what actually happened (infinitely less usefully) is that we linked to its page.
This isn’t just a feature limitation; it’s experienced as an actual bug (lost data), given how linking functionality is presented / commonly understood, and unexpectedly destructive; in good conscience, it seems to me an asterisk is required when people encounter Dynalist’s linking for the first time, so that they don’t discover this limitation along the way, after deploying too many links that end up obliterated from item migration. Am I missing something here?
The ideal for my purposes (as someone who moves items around a lot, and who would rather they remain where created but also appear in other docs) is to offer something like Trello’s forthcoming “mirror cards,” allowing items to live in multiple specified places. This would not only keep me on Dynalist but push me happily to paid.
Any chance, @Erica?
Every tool has its UX nits, but this is the core shortcoming of Dynalist and it has me seriously considering leaving, with a heavy heart, because I’ve invested so much here. Linking, even as a sub-optimal workaround method I use to try having items “bilocate” (or “tri-locate”) is largely a broken feature. Can you advise on whether you see it this way, or if I’m overlooking a better way to do this? Thank you, Erica!
As a heavy user of backlinks it would be great to see this improved. When the item moves all the backlinks are lost
thanks a lot, @Erica and @Shida. Dynalist is a phenomenal product built by a duo of phenoms, and it surpasses WorkFlowy in many ways.
Still, because of their new mirroring functionality (which Trello is also publicly going after) as well as their non-broken node links, I’ve again been giving WorkFlowy a hard look. And I regret doing so! I just want a tool that checks enough boxes that I am not inclined to drift after enough limitation frustration builds up. Dynalist has come closer to my dream than most notes products, and if you guys do mirroring right (as your penchant for clever UX has me thinking you would, better than WF’s implementation), then you can forget about my request to fix linking. (I can’t speak for anyone except myself, but I largely use linking as inconvenient compensation for the fact Dynalist offers no mirroring.) Make mirroring a premium feature – whatever! This is worth paying for, and may make it worth your while to revisit Dynalist for a couple weeks?
Either way, sincere kudos on the talents & hustle that has brought Dynalist this far thus far, guys –
A new update is out on web that fixes this issue. Moving nodes from drag & drop to another document as well as using the node mover shortcut should now update all links that are affected by the move.
Once the update is stable it will be released to desktop and mobile a bit later!
Ah alas, I think it’s been somewhat better – but the core issue still remains (at least on web as of the past couple days)
I copy an item’s link and get this [actual URL obscured / jumbled for privacy]
https://dynalist.io/d/0xxxxxxxR_XjnwfbhvabsiasdnoadosX_#z=IGF2zKZthDzRcVEYH6RNK1zH
I then move that item to a different doc
Clicking the link I had just copied (and pasted into a Trello task) brings me back to the doc the item was formerly in – not the node whose link I grabbed.
So I go find that node and copy the link again, and the link now looks like this (the middle parts have changed):
https://dynalist.io/d/AdifferentG_Kdifferent#z=IGF2zKZthDzRcVEYH6RNK1zH
Did the fix not cover all scenarios or did something again break? Thanks, @Shida!
It does not cover all scenarios - When you move the the node, we go through all your documents and update any links that point to nodes within the ones you’re moving, but if you had links externally we can’t account for that. This is fundamentally a challenging problem to solve because links contain the document ID to resolve to the correct document, and when moving links across documents, the link wouldn’t work anymore if the document ID isn’t updated.
Just wanted to say this has made a huge difference to me now I can trust moving things between documents without things breaking.
I have one particular file that has become a bit messy and would like to tidy it up. My initial thought is to export it as OPML to a Mindmapping app so I can properly organise it then import the tidied version back into Dynalist. But, reading the above, is it even possible that the links would still work once I have done all that?
The links won’t work because dynalist will interpret the pasted nodes as new nodes, giving them new ID’s and thus new URLs to be linked. Links only get auto-updated if moved via dynalist mechanisms.
Guess I knew that… Thanks for confirming