The SharePoint Blues and the Broken-Links Shakedown

Migrations are seldom smooth and simple. Discover how to avoid the headaches — No singing required.

sharepoint broken linksIf you’re reading this, then chances are you’ve either (1) been put through the SharePoint wringer, which turned out to be a bigger beast than anticipated and now you’re in search of anything that will get you through this, or (2) alternatively, you’re about to migrate to SharePoint and you’re info-gathering so you can better predict and eliminate any unwanted surprises.

This article has helpful tips, regardless of which category you are in.

We get where you’re coming from. Just to be clear, when we talk about the blues here, we’re not talking about B.B. King’s 12 bar blues in “The Thrill is Gone.” We’re closer to the blues you’re considering drowning at one of the 12 bars closest to you. And if the word “bar” is considered NSFW (not safe for work), let’s just call it a watering hole. A rose by any other name…

sharepoint broken linksBut trust us, if you’ve got missing data and a zillion broken links, post-migration, we fully understand if you’re feeling like the thrill is (definitely) gone. We’ll cover a solution for your post-migration blues. On the other hand, if you’re still in the info-gathering phase, stick with us because this article can help you avoid one major pitfall of migrating to SharePoint.

Luckily, this particular establishment serves a delightful signature cyber-cocktail that will soothe your woes (or prevent them from happening in the first place). It’s called LinkFixer Advanced and it will banish your blues, and restore the missing data and broken links that disturb your otherwise sweet dreams.

Beware of the Dragon

In the world of IT (and Database management), there are plenty of instructions and orders from above that drift down to us and spike our pulse rates. Perhaps a simple order such as, “Migrate everything to SharePoint,” is enough to ignite your internal inferno, leaving you to breathe smoke and fire around your department.

sharepoint broken links

Following such an instruction, through the soft-focus blur of dragon smoke, you watch your evenings and weekends vanish, along with the scheduled trip to the lake/coast. You just know this is going to be an “issue” and the cancellation is going to leave your significant other stony-faced and silent. (Hope that new sofa is super comfy.)

Following the migration request, once you’d extinguished the last of the fires, you thought about what lay ahead. The company had a lot of files. A ton of them. Maybe even hundreds of thousands or millions of them. Ugh. In the end, you squelched the inner fire, quit bellowing smoke and got it all migrated, but now you’re dealing with the post-migration aftermath. You’ve got missing data and end-users that are up in arms.

sharepoint broken links

Is there no end to this dang-blasted debacle? The higher-ups are expressing their dissatisfaction. The end-users are being a little less diplomatic and are flat-out whining and complaining. That family trip that you thought may be salvageable after the migration is all but evaporating like mist in the sun.

And if one more lady in accounting carps, “I don’t understand how this program works,” you’d be completely forgiven for replying through gritted teeth, “It’s not a program, it’s a platform.”

sharepoint broken links

All of that, perhaps, has possibly left you feeling a little frustrated and irked. (We’re trying to be diplomatic here.)

Back to the broken links, for a moment. We both know that the amount of time and money to repair all those little suckers is virtually mind-numbing. That potentially means many a night on the sofa. Unless…

LinkFixer could be Your Lucille

B.B. King’s love for Lucille, his gleaming black Gibson ES-355 (electric guitar), was legendary. Together, they secured their eternal position in the jazz-spangled annals of musical history. Can you imagine being that guy? The guy that can tickle the ivories (or your keyboard, in this case) to restore all the missing data and repair all the broken links in a flash? The superiors would be silenced and the laundry list of complaint emails can get zapped straight into the trashcan. Delete contents. Oh, yes. Uh huh. Yup, you can.

Linkfixer advanced

Be Still, My Beating Heart

Before we continue, just a reminder to breathe air, not fire. And smile — like the intellectual giant your peers know you to be, not the dragon the users have come to fear! Once you manage to get your pulse rate down to a humanoid range, let’s look at the overall picture.

SharePoint is a good platform, and worth transferring to, but no migration was ever going to be 100% smooth. Parent files (files that contain links to other files) and the child files (a file linked to by a parent file) they are associated with are going to get separated. Links will break. It’s going to happen, just as surely as the kids will one day leave home.

sharepoint broken links

Much like learning to play one of B.B.’s riffs, each migration is going to present its own unique challenges. You know that and we know that, but it doesn’t mean that the-powers-that-be are going to accept that as an excuse for downtime. However, LinkFixer Advanced will completely save your bacon (or whatever it is the dragons sport). And it’ll do it fast. Fast enough that the family trip can probably go ahead, you can vacate the sofa and return to your bed.

How to Play Lucille Like a Pro

sharepoint broken linksIf you’re here as the result of a search on retrieving missing data or repairing broken links after migrating to SharePoint, you already suspect that LinkFixer Advanced can possibly achieve that for you. What you may not know is that it can also be used pre-migration or as your primary migration tool.

Let’s talk pre migration first. Pre-migration, you can use the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate feature to protect your links. Post-migration, simply use the Cure feature to resolve link breakage in a single, simple batch run.

As a migration tool, you would actually use the Move and Rename feature to physically move files and folders. This is not only for SharePoint migrations. It applies equally whether you’re migrating from one server to another, from a local server into the Cloud, or from your current files to a CMS (such as SharePoint or OpenText, for example), or even if you’re simply restructuring your current file system or doing an upgrade. Either way, as you’ve discovered, without LinkFixer Advanced broken links can result in hundreds or thousands of man-hours and the incessant griping of your adoring public, the end-users.

sharepoint broken links

Finally, there’s the option that has probably brought you here, which is when the migration is already complete and you’ve got a veritable sea of broken links everywhere, like litter on the dance floor after a particularly sultry evening of boogying the night away at the jazz club. It’s not too late. The Modify Links feature can rapidly fix thousands of links at a time, ensuring that each link points to the file it’s supposed to, thereby restoring your missing data. Think of LinkFixer Advanced as your disaster recovery tool/club clean-up crew.

Learning to Play

Just in case you’re still in an information-gathering phase, or trying to wrap your head around SharePoint, let’s boil it down into the simplest terms.

As stated earlier, SharePoint is not a program, it’s a platform. That means it’s not one thing, it’s many things, many products and technologies, all wrapped up together. SharePoint makes websites. It helps you collaborate and work with other people. It provides you with a place to store your stuff and it gives you a way to search through all that stuff. It helps you bring it all together and understand it better. It will also help you build and extend what you have.

sharepoint broken links

Think of it like learning MS Office. Nobody does that. You learn Word, then maybe Excel, and then Outlook and so forth. SharePoint is much the same.

Banish the Broken-Links Blues

Armed with the data you now have, you can see why LinkFixer Advanced is the easy choice.

Since our design is patented, there’s really no competition – just like B.B. King. No wannabe’s, no pretenders. Only the real deal.

sharepoint broken links

Call 727-442-1822 today for a live demonstration or to download a free trial. Alternatively, there’s a free trial right here (https://linktek.com/linkfixer-advanced-free-trial/).

Perhaps the next time you see an order or instruction that would normally make grown IT men roar and seethe, you’ll be able to smile calmly and maybe whistle some 12 bar blues, because you know you’ve got this covered. And the thrill is back!

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