You can create document linkages for items as you update or upload them via an Excel sheet. You can also attach up to 5 public media file URLs upon item import.
But what are media file URLs? These are the web addresses that direct you to media files uploaded online. You can access these by right-clicking on an image, hitting ‘Inspect’, and viewing the source attribute (more on that below).
However, it is important to note that these addresses appear differently depending on the domain. You might have to edit your links before adding them to your Excel file.
1. Editing Dropbox media file URLs
Dropbox links end in the code “dl=0” or “dl=1”. Update this to “raw=1” before adding the link to your Excel sheet. Refer to the example below:
| Dropbox link (Unedited with “dl=0”) | Dropbox link (Unedited with “raw=1”) |
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/buz195ijl5ct6nv/1a.PNG?dl=0 | https://www.dropbox.com/s/buz195ijl5ct6nv/1a.PNG?raw=1. |
Once you’ve edited it, it can be copied to your Excel file for import.
Find out more about EZRentOut’s Dropbox integration.
2. Editing media file URLs other than Dropbox
Web addresses for media files generally end in their extension, i.e., .jpeg for JPEG images, .png for PNG images, .gif for GIF images, and so on. As an example, here’s what the URL for an image on our blog looks like:
https://cdn.ezo.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/06113903/UserWay-integration-1024×512.png
Notice how the image extension is at the end of the address. Here’s how to get this address for your image.
- Navigate to the website where the image exists.
- Once here, right-click on the media file and hit inspect to see the HTML code for this element.
- The field highlighted in yellow shows the public URL for this image. It appears as the ‘source’ attribute (src in HTML).
- Alternatively, you can right-click on the image, click on ‘Copy Image Address’, and paste this address into a text box or text application to see what it looks like.
- If the image extension (.jpg, .png, etc) comes at the end of the address, it’s ready to be copied to your Excel. This is true for the image shown in our example, where the URL is https://cdn.ezo.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/06113903/UserWay-integration-1024×512.png
- If the extension comes somewhere in the middle of the address, like https://example.com/images/television.png/112/dImL/, edit the link to https://example.com/images/television.png.
3. Forming linkages
Once you’ve edited your public media file URLs, you can copy them to your Excel sheet. Add up to 5 document links—separated by commas—into a column in your Excel sheet. They should look something like this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/Item46.jpg, http://bizplus.net/TransferDoc.jpg
Remember to assign them to the “Document attachments” mapping while importing.
4. Associating documents from the Account library
You can also associate documents from the EZRentOut Document Library (Items → Documents) during the import. Just replace one (or more) of the public URLs with the document’s file name. For example,
“Flowchart12.jpg, https://upload.wikimedia.org/Item46.jpg“.
5. Exporting document list
You can export a list of all your documents from More → Documents → Export → CSV. The export would include links to the URLs of each document.
6. Expiration time of image URLs in Custom Reports
The image URLs in EZRentOut custom reports are temporary and do expire. These URLs include an embedded expiration time parameter. Typically, the expiration time is 12 hours (or 43,200 seconds) from when the report is generated. After this period, the image link will no longer work, and the image will be inaccessible through that URL.
7. Accessing external Image URLs in a CSV mass update
If you use publicly accessible image URLs from websites in a CSV file to mass update asset images in EZRentOut, those images are not just linked. Instead, EZRentOut downloads and stores those images on its servers during the update process. This means that once the images are successfully imported, they become independent of their original sources. Even if the external website hosting the image takes it down or removes it, the image within EZRentOut remains intact and unaffected.
8. Exporting permanent URLs or full-resolution images
EZRentOut does not provide permanent (static) URLs for item images. If you want to export their item data along with images, the available method is to generate a custom report in XLS format. This report includes thumbnail versions of the images next to the item details.
However, these thumbnails are still served via temporary URLs, meaning they are also subject to expiration after approximately 12 hours. Additionally, the exported thumbnails are not full-resolution images, and there is no native functionality that allows users to download the original high-quality images directly or access them through a permanent link.
