Options when spaces are in URL

I have started to create dashboards in OneNote of resources involved in specific projects. For example, Project A will have five resources scattered in different libraries or folders; in OneNote, I'll create a table with five nicknames and the URIs. Most URIs point to local files, and most of them have spaces in the filename or pathname. It does not appear to work to use quotation marks after the 'file:///' indicator, so I've been substituting '%20' for the spaces. That works fine, but it's time-consuming and error-prone. Is that my only option? Is there some way to make the quotation mark approach work in this context? (Would there be any advantage to using Excel or Lists for these dashboards, instead of OneNote?)