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Lei Zhou's avatar
Lei Zhou
Copper Contributor
Nov 25, 2018

Tool to auto fix broken excel links after migration to SharePoint online

Hi everyone,   We are migrating one of our customer's file share the SharePoint online, and we getting big pushback from their finance department, as they have a lot of linked excel files. file lin...
Excel
Excel Online
office 365
SharePoint Online
OliverRM's avatar
OliverRM
Copper Contributor

Hi Lei,

 

you can try our tool => ReplaceMagic (check: www.replacemagic.com). In recent months almost 70% of migrations that we are supporting are to SharePoint.Online with all possible documents types (yes, changes in Excel will also work).

 

In case of any questions you can always contact us.

 

Btw. we work natively with SharePoint (you can connect to it directly from ReplaceMagic). More infos: https://www.replacemagic.com/HowToUseSharePoint.aspx

 

BR,

Oliver

NBS42's avatar
NBS42
Brass Contributor
Jun 03, 2021
We have the same problem, where we have hardcoded links that point to a folder path on a mapped drive letter (L:) in NTFS. It seems like we should be able to "fake out" Excel by migrating the files from the L: drive to SharePoint and then assigning the same exact drive letter mapping for the identical folder path that's now in SharePoint, but Excel is somehow not fooled. Excel complains the linked files can't be found, and then we have to have the user manually update the links anyway -- which is exactly the scenario we were trying to avoid. There are thousands of linked files.

Oliver, we tried your ReplaceMagic tool, but it required that we manually verify the links after they were replaced on a link-by-link basis. That is very tedious when you're talking about thousands of files.

Drive letter mapping in SharePoint Online is much too hard to do, but we have figured out how to do that, thanks to another post we found online (I can share that here if anyone is interested).
  • SteveMUK's avatar
    SteveMUK
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 17, 2021

    NBS42 

    I'd love to hear how you worked around this.

     

  • Oliver_Dracus's avatar
    Oliver_Dracus
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 17, 2021
    Hi NBS42,

    why you had manually to check links as if you go to Configuration => Processing there are 2 options to check links:
    1. Check does hyperlink exist
    2. Check does file link exist

    Also in newer versions of software we included under Configuration => SharePoint "Native SharePoint check of broken links" but this will for every link send request through CSOM to SharePoint which will increase risk of throttling which is anyway due to Covid high.

    One important point - to get understanding of your links scanning of documents and check if links are broken is completely free.
    • NBS42's avatar
      NBS42
      Brass Contributor
      Jun 17, 2021
      Hmm. A colleague was using the tool firsthand. I didn't try it myself. Maybe we need to look at again.
      • Oliver_Dracus's avatar
        Oliver_Dracus
        Copper Contributor
        Jun 17, 2021
        If you want we can always setup Teams and do brainstorming together 🙂 You can always reach us over support(@).replacemagic.com
  • LP6440's avatar
    LP6440
    Copper Contributor
    Dec 20, 2022

    Hello NBS42 ,

     

    can you please share the workaround to fix broken links after SharePoint Migration.

    • jay_philip's avatar
      jay_philip
      Copper Contributor
      Jan 27, 2023

      LP6440 

       

      Hi, in addition to what @nbs42 suggested,there is another workaround.
      LinkReporter, https://linktek.com/link-reporter/ a free scanning from tool from LinkTek will provide a full list of all the links, what file they are in and what file they point to.
      Next, LinkFixer Advanced, https://linktek.com/linkfixer-advanced/ can re-link everything for you, fast and automatically. I can provide you with a free trial version of LinkFixer Advanced.
      Best, JP @jay_philip

       

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