# Associate link with topic
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** featured-link
**Created:** [March 7, 2018, 10:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399 "2018-03-07T10:05:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 10:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399/1 "2018-03-07T10:05:12Z")
When pasting a link to a new topic title, this link is associated to the topic, even if the title is changed manually. This is a great feature. But it seems not feasible to associate a link to an existing topic. Associated links enable to distinguish local topics from externally focused topics.
Is there a way to associate a link to a topic after topic creation? Can someone provide pointers to the relevant code?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 6:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399/2 "2018-03-07T18:11:07Z")
What do you mean by “associate link”?
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### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 10:40am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399/3 "2018-03-08T10:40:24Z")
You know, when you create a topic by pasting an URL into the topic title box.
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### Author:  [@ChrisBeach](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ChrisBeach)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 4:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399/4 "2018-03-08T16:12:10Z")
> [@zogstrip](#):
>
> What do you mean by “associate link”?
I think the suggestion here is to be able to edit an existing topic (that wasn’t started by pasting a URL), and to get the extra goodies you get when pasting a URL (during the edit).
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [March 9, 2018, 5:07am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399/5 "2018-03-09T05:07:51Z")
I actually thought [the standard behaviour we landed on here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/start-a-topic-by-pasting-a-link-like-reddit/54071) was “show link formatting if the very start of the topic is a link” but it does appear like the only way to achieve this special formatting is by pasting the link in the title bar.
IMO we should change this.
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### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2019, 6:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/associate-link-with-topic/82399/6 "2019-06-13T06:12:30Z")
I just noticed that if I “reply as a linked topic” and paste a link as the topic title, this does not fire the link association either. Can you please point to the code responsible for this logic?