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Julian Revheim Askeland's avatar
Julian Revheim Askeland
Copper Contributor
Oct 26, 2017

Migrate Excel files with a lot of links to SharePoint Online?

Hi,   We are in a process of moving our file server to SharePoint Online. Now we have a department that has taken a master-class in linking Excel documents together.   From my web searches I'm u...
  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Jan 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.

     

     

     

     

     

     

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