Hyperlinks do not work after move from shared drive to Sharepoint site

Question

Hyperlinks do not work after move from shared drive to Sharepoint site

DannyVB 21

MY SHARED DRIVE
I have files on an on-site server shared drive (Z:) with subdirectories A, B, etc...
On the root directory of Z, I have an html file "Table_of_Content.html" with hyperlinks pointing to the various files.
The hyperlinks in html are of the form "file:A/filename_x.docx"...
Hence they are local / relative hyperlinks (if you would move the whole tree to another shared drive the links still work)
MY SHAREPOINT SITE
https://MYCOMPANY.sharepoint.com/sites/Documents/Q4
MOVE from shared drive to sharepoint
I synced the SPOL library "Q4" to my PC following instructions in
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sync-sharepoint-files-and-folders-87a96948-4dd7-43e4-aca1-53f3e18bea9b
In file explorer I see a shared folder : MYCOMPANY/Q4
I copied all files (including subdirectories A, B etc) from shared drive Z: to the Q4 directory
They show up in SPOL in under Q4. OK
HYPERLINKS not working
In the html file on the SPOL Q4 directory the Link "file:A/filename_x.docx" does not work anymore.
Based on https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1136629/files-move-from-on-server-shared-drive-to-sharepoi.html
I changed the hyperlink to "https://MYCOMPANY.sharepoint.com/sites/Documents/Q4/A/filename_x.docx"
-> It still does not work if I left-click on the hyperlink
-> It works if I right-click "Open link in new tab" (albeit after a window "Open this file?" > ok > window "requested content uses a sign-in method that may be insecure" > ok)
-> It works if I copy the link and paste it in the web-browser (albeit after a window "Open this file?" > ok)
MYQUESTION: How can I make that my users can open the hyperlinks with left-click only? Remark: this server has several thousands of files, therefore any manual / non-automatized method is not workable.

Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2023-01-10T05:49:24.13+00:00

Hi @DannyVB , Thank you for your question. We are currently looking into this issue and will give you an update as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding and support.

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Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2023-01-10T05:49:24.13+00:00

Hi @DannyVB , Thank you for your question. We are currently looking into this issue and will give you an update as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding and support.

Answer 1

Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Microsoft External Staff

Hi @DannyVB , The documents referenced by the hyperlinks have been migrated from the local drive to the SharePoint site,because the webpage cannot read your local file path，so the original hyperlinks are bound to fail, unfortunately, you need to manually update hyperlinks to new path of documents. I deeply regret this. Thank you for your understanding and support. I did the test as you described，I have an html file with hyperlinks pointing to the various files move from shared drive to sharepoint. Then correct the hyperlink. It is exactly as you describe: you need to "Open link in new tab" or paste it in the web-browser. Sorry for the bad experience. You could make your suggestion in this feedback portal to improve user experience.

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DannyVB 21 Reputation points

2023-01-10T15:27:48.377+00:00
Thank you very much for quick reaction.

NEW TAB: As a workaround: I will add some text "If link does not react: Right-click "Open link in new tab" ". Although this really does not look professional. :-(

RENAMING of path of documents:
Is there some sharepoint "environment variable" corresponding to "current folder" (which than can be used in front of the relative links in html file) ? In regular Windows this would be %CD%. =>This would avoid having to hard code the Sharepoint file-paths into the hyperlinks in the html. These hard-coded hyperlinks will get broken if in future the files are moved to another Sharepoint library.
Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2023-01-11T07:20:31.4233333+00:00

Hi @DannyVB ,

After my internal and external searches, there is no statement in sharepoint similar to opening files in the current directory in windows: %CD%. There is no concept of environment variables in sharepoint.

In addition, if the file is moved in sharepoint, the url will change. At this time, you need to re-update the hyperlink in html. Unfortunately this was unavoidable. And the same is true in windows.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".
DannyVB 21 Reputation points

2023-01-11T13:00:52.5633333+00:00

My conclusion is that, due the lack of support by Sharepoint of hyperlink type "file:local_filename"

Sharepoint is not a viable solution for moving large libraries of files from an existing shared drive

(where navigating through the files was facilitated in html pages (or word docs) with hyperlinks to local files ).

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Hyperlinks do not work after move from shared drive to Sharepoint site

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