Customising the Announcments Web

A pain with the standard announcments web part is that you cannot just click on the title and go straight to the attachement or web page that you need.

Solution

Create a new column called 'Link' , make this a hyperlink
This has two columns to edit for each item , the address itself either http: , ftp etc and the text description. You can leave the text description blank.
If you are using an attachement , upload it then in edit view right click the mouse and copy shortcut and paste the path in the hyperlink column for Link.
If you are linking to an internal or external web page just paste the link.

Amend the title field
Click on the title field in the announcments web part, edit hyperlink and replace in the address
mailto:%7BURL_Display?ID={@ID} with this {substring-before(@WebPageLink, ', ')} - leave the text description of the hyperlink as @Title.

You will now find you can click on title and it will take you straight to eithe the attachement or web page AND you can still click down and view or edit item !

*** Note you cannot store a relative URL in a list item column , has to be fully qualified **** a pain if you move servers since you will need to edit all the links in the announcments list ****