Links and Duplicate File Names

I’ve discovered some unusual behavior with [] style links between notes. I have a slew of literature notes that link to about 100 permanent notes. If I create a new note with the same name as an existing permanent note, all the backlinks from the original note shift to this new note. There is no alert or error message telling me this has happened. If I change the name of the new note to make it unique, my existing literature notes are simply updated with the new name. If I delete the new note, all the links in my literature notes become inactive “zombie” links that do nothing when you click on them (vs. reverting back to the original note). My original permanent note which used to have a bunch of backlinks, now shows nothing.

My hunch is that Bear’s architecture for links is tied to the name of the note and not its underlying note ID. But without an error message or at least having the links stay connected to the first instance of the note, this will create all sorts of havoc in my linked notes system.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

1 Like

One follow up to this issue:

The link problems I encountered happened during the import of a bunch of notes. I figured how to preserve my links by changing the order in which I imported notes. In my case, I imported my journal from Day One and my PKM notes from Craft. By importing the Craft notes last, all my links are working as expected.

I just need to be mindful of the names of new notes I create that already exist in my system.