Help! Using bookmark hyperlinks does not work correctly in word documents which are in teams/sharepoint.

Question

Hello,

Problem goes as follows: I have two word documents (document A and document B) stored in sharepoint (has to be accessed by multiple people all around), and I want insert a hyperlink in document A that opens the document B from a correct spot (e.g. at chapter 4). This is done by creating a bookmark in certain location of document B, and then inserting bookmark hyperlink to in to the document A, which then directs to the bookmark of document B. This works as intended if I have the documents locally on my computer.

But if the documents are on sharepoint, by clicking the bookmark hyperlink it does not open the document B, but instead automatically downloads it, and does not even open the document at the location of the bookmark? (this is with chrome). If I modify the hyperlink to direct just to the document B and not the bookmark in it, it will open correctly and not download. But I would need to have the bookmark link working to aid the navigation.

With Microsoft Edge, by clicking the bookmark link I get this error that its not found at all. With Edge the hyperlink works ok too if I change it to direct just to opening the document B.

***Moved from Finnish/Microsoft 365 ja Office/Word/Tuntematon/Windows***

Answer 1

Dear Eero,

As the bookmark isn't supported in Word for the web, the error message may appear when you open the document A by inserting the bookmark link by the SharePoint Online file URL like https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/TestCommunication/Subsite2/Shared%20Documents/DocumentB.docx#bookmark1 in Word for the web or in the Word application.

As a workaround, I suggest you sync the both files with the OneDrive sync client first, define the bookmarks, open the both files from the local sync folder and define the bookmark links like C:\Users\username\contoso\Subsite2 - Documents\DocumentB.docx#bookmark1 by clicking on Links>Current Folder>Browse for Files>selecting the local sync folder>selecting the document B from the local sync folder>Bookmark>selecting the bookmarks>autosaving the files.

Then setting the files to be opened in the Word application by default in SharePoint Online and then you can click on the bookmark links in the document A to go to the desired places of the document B and any updates on the document B will be synced to SharePoint Online.

Thanks for your understanding and have a nice day!

Cliff