Broken-link checker
Provide a link-check service on all sites, so Site Owners can limit the amount of broken links across their sites. Applies to SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server.
Tom Braman
shared this idea
AdminSites Product Team
(Product Owner, Microsoft SharePoint)
responded
Thanks for making this suggestion. We don’t currently have plans to implement this, but would love to better understand the scenarios and need.
Do you expect that people are deleting pages, or changing pages/content names frequently enough that they’re breaking other pages/content without knowing it?
Is the site owner responsible for fixing that content or the authors/editors moving the content around?
33 comments
-
Sheila
commented
We have content linked from many sites where users change items, pages, documents, etc. in their site and other sites are linked to it. Also, as others have specified here, during migration, which we are just completing, it has been a serious pain finding broken links. We are still working on updating forms and there are links throughout the entire company site to some of these. Some links are even in FAQ lists. So this is going to be a pain to find them all. I definitely think this should be on MS's radar.
-
Andy O
commented
During migration from On Prem to SPOL we find a lot of links will be broken after migration. In navigation, in pages and in documents themselves. It would be a very handy tool to be able to produce a report of broken links so the site owners can easliy idenitfy and repair them.
It would be even more handy if the function could also batch fix broken links.
-
Anonymous
commented
@Microsoft - The scenario is VERY common for intranet and publishing (i.e. Communication site) scenarios. If site managers and publishers are cleaning up content as a part of a well defined content lifecycle strategy, there inevitably will be pages / content that are linked from other sections of the site which are deleted / moved / etc. I lead a team that has developed many intranet solutions on behalf of some of the largest companies in the world leveraging SharePoint as a platform, and this is one of the most common asks. They often resort to building something custom, or leveraging a 3rd party tool (there are a couple that do this) to accomplish this.
-
Scott
commented
Microsoft markets SharePoint as an intranet tool. If so, intranets are a core line of business activity of any organisation - especially large ones.
Being able to audit and manage broken links is a must.
How can I run an intranet of thousands of pages, with tens of thousands of links, without such a basic tool?
-
Sune Vadsholt Lyster
commented
The broken-link checker, incoming links viewer and other sophisticated link tools are essential for large companies, where the documentation must be transparent, reliable and innovative. Recently, I defined a new way to document corporate solutions in a company with 24,000 employees. I very early excluded modern SharePoint as an opportunity, due to the missing link functionalities. Now, another company with 19,000 employees asks me to design governance for its documentation on SharePoint. The size of the documentation is too large for codes like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1242703/how-to-make-incoming-links-appear-as-a-drop-down-in-sharepoint-wiki.
At least one global competitor to SharePoint saves all hyperlinks in a distinct table. I know that this is a complex thing. On the other hand, this table contributes to reports of broken links, instant re-coloring of broken links on visited sites and the opportunity to embed incoming links (by labels) anywhere on the sites.
I experience that superior documentation combined with sophisticated link tools multiply the productivity of consultants with a factor 2-6. The numbers origin from improvements of existing corporate solutions.
-
Anonymous
commented
I would think this is an essential. Our organisation is legal so we have a lot of links to external web sites and resources so we have not control over the external links being changed. It would be a HUGE advantage to run report to test each hyperlink and identify any which do not return content
-
Hannah Blume
commented
We use highlighted content to view pages sorted into topics on communication sites. Because we want the pages sequenced in a particular order, we 1) change the number of the "name" column, 2) and then sort by name in the highlighted content web part.
Here's the issue: when you change the "Name" in the page library, that also changes the link to the page. This could cause many broken links on our Intranet if the links of pages are constantly changing.
After we publish content and want to change the other of pages grouped by topic.
-
Lucienne
commented
I've got 80 individuals adding content to the Sales Portal SharePoint site and I'm very concerned about broken links. I'm hoping that Microsoft can consider this soon otherwise it becomes an untrustworthy site for 3000 users. Please help! It would also be great to have the MS FLOW rules set up to push news once a week to users.. we've read some very technical work arounds, but shouldn't this just be an out of the box function? Feels like a fundamental item for SharePoint to have. Thanks!
-
Veronica Duff
commented
We migrated our file server to SharePoint at the start of the COVID-19 to give our staff remote access to their files. In the migration process we ended up with some broken links. We need a way to fix them as they are the primary links to the SharePoint sites.
-
L White VA
commented
We have a large intranet. Power users frequently move files between sites or rename sites or delete content, etc. We need a tool that identifies broken links. Period.
-
jerome.racine
commented
Hi, what about this request? Is it in your plans to add this option? Thank you!
-
nicholas.zawackis
commented
About the Sites Product Team's comment, the scenario is not so much the pages are changing, it's groups external to a department that either change the website platform, server cluster, or website domain... When this happens with one group, it's manageable. But when you connect to 15+ external sites (and those sites change about every 1-2 years), it can be frustrating to keep up with.
Whether the external sites are responsible or the site linking to them is responsible, we still need a tool to help out.
If the external sites need to fix it, they need a way to see which sites are referencing them. If the site using the link needs to fix it, then a broken link report is the better option.
-
Morio Kumagawa
commented
This should be OOTB. Everytime I do a migration, first question is how do I find and fix all the links that will break as part of the migration. Then as mentioned multiple times this feature would also be very helpful for ongoing maintenance of the sites.
Love the idea of it being a crawl and report, rather than having to go through the site page by page (not realistic). -
RKeener
commented
You have made it so create a simple link that you can easily look and see if it is a clear link to a site/document/library that people add links to the wrong place and don't realize it.. End users grab the quick link because it's easy and the site owner cleans up links and deletes it or the link is to the wrong thing, or an end user changes the name of a folder. It's very easy to accidentally break links.
-
Mario Barusi
commented
There are third party tools which might help here if needed. We tested ReplaceMagic with which we were able to check links in documents stored in DocLibs, SharePoint pages and also in documents which are list item attachments. ReplaceMagic was used after SPO migration but I believe that it works for other on-prem versions also.
Hopefully I am not breaking rules by posting about 3rd party tool here but as tool main purpose is something different...
-
Mike
commented
you better buy Atlassian then
-
Amanda
commented
We have quicklinks throughout our sharepoint to the "source of truth" document, if that source of truth gets changed in any way, all the links are broken without knowing. This is on site pages, within documents (related policies and procedures) etc. Extensive references that might be broken, impossible to keep track of manually.
-
Anonymous
commented
Link checkers have been a standard for online content QA for over a decade, probably longer. I'm not sure I understand why this would be hard to implement. Note that no content ever got posted to TechNet/MSDN in the past or the new implementation now without running a link checker. And plus 1 for all the other comments about how common this is.
-
Anonymous
commented
We have many content editors around the organisation and it's virtually impossible to keep track of what content or links have changed. As the content editors are scattered around different organisational units. e.g. Content editor in IT might link to documents or pages in HR, but when content editor in HR makes changes to documents or pages they won't be notifying anybody. Therefore, a broken link checker within SharePoint Online would be very beneficial.
-
Carry Megens
commented
Do you expect that people are deleting pages, or changing pages/content names frequently enough that they’re breaking other pages/content without knowing it?
YES, a big YES
Is the site owner responsible for fixing that content or the authors/editors moving the content around?
Don't care - when a quality check is done (broken link report run) the reported broken links can be fixed by anyone having sufficient rights.
