Forum Discussion
Migrate Excel files with a lot of links to SharePoint Online?
- DeletedJan 25, 2018
This is quite problematic for our users too, a lot of users got caught out by creating spreadsheets in OneDrive sync folder on their machine, linking there and then sharing the files. The Excel has a link reference to C:\user\<name>\One Drive - <Tenant Name>\Test.xlsx etc But of course the person using the file does not have access that persons c: drive so the <name> bit doesn't exist on their local drive.
Links to https:\\<onedrive location> tend to also be a little slow.
So its tricky, plus links like this can easily break spreadsheets and cause errors. I'm not sure I can count the times that someone has come to me asking me to check their spreadsheet because they think it might be wrong but they can't see where the issue is. Normally its a link or copying down etc.
If it was me, I would use the new feature built into Excel called PowerQuery, on the data tab, using SharePoint Folder link and avoid using links all together ... but this is a lot of work to change, but the long term benefits are huge.
This effectively queries the other spreadsheet, using a simple interface, so no need for vloopup or linking or calculations in the spreadsheet ... all calculations can be done in the query, so they are repeatable and difficult to break. Plus as a bonus, if you copy the query which it builds it can be pasted into PowerBI and you can create dashboards very quickly that are available anywhere.
Hi
Disclaimer: I work for QiPoint!
We offer a tool that will find, report on, and fix the links in MS Excel formulas and also in cells. The Excel files need to be in SharePoint on-premises or SharePoint Online. There is an option in the tool to turn this on under Links->Manage-Options, this works well and is in use by many of our customers.
The tool also provides the worksheet and the cell coordinates in the reports so you know where links are present.
https://www.qipoint.com/broken-link-manager
Hope that helps!
Chris