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NotSoAverageJoe-3308 avatar image
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NotSoAverageJoe-3308 asked NotSoAverageJoe-3308 answered

Link to Legacy SharePoint Site Not Working

Hi Everyone,

I'm running into an issue with linking to a document in a legacy SharePoint site (SharePoint 2010).

For some background, I'm in the process of creating a new team site in SharePoint Online. However, my company's main intranet site is still based off of SharePoint 2010. For the team site that I'm creating, I want to link to certain documents on the main site that my team doesn't own (i.e. I don't want to make copies and risk sharing an older document if there is a change made). However, when I embed the link in SharePoint Online, it doesn't open the document when clicked.

Some strange quirks that I found with this problem are:
1. If I use IE instead of Chrome, this problem doesn't occur
2. If I create a new tab in Chrome and paste the link, the document will open

I believe that these quirks imply that there is an issue with using a modern browser when linking to documents on a legacy SharePoint site. However, it can't just be the browser as pasting the link directly into a new tab works. Therefore, SharePoint Online must have something in the backend that is blocking this link from opening. Does anyone know if there is an option to disable this "feature" or some workaround to bypass it?

Update: it appears that this issue is only affecting MS Office files, like Excel or Word. Links to PDFs and webpages on the older version of SharePoint work.

office-sharepoint-online
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NotSoAverageJoe-3308 avatar image
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NotSoAverageJoe-3308 answered

It looks like the files that I was trying to link to have ActiveX controls built-in to them and it was preventing the files from opening. My company has an extension enabled in Edge that fixes the issue.

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ElsieLu-MSFT avatar image
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ElsieLu-MSFT answered NotSoAverageJoe-3308 commented

Hi @NotSoAverageJoe-3308 ,

Per my test in SP 2013, I am not able to reproduce your issue. I can successfully download documents in SPO pointing to old links(from SP2013) in Chrome and IE. Not sure if this is a compatibility issue between SP2010 and Chrome. Since Microsoft has stopped supporting SP 2010, I would suggest you consider upgrading your SP2010 to the current mainstream version (SP2019 or SPO).


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Hi @ElsieLu-MSFT ,

I recently found out that pdf files work fine when I link those but I'm unable to link word or excel documents. Maybe my issue is just with Office documents?

As for switching to an updated version of SharePoint, I unfortunately do not have any control over that. The 2010 site is my company's intranet site that I'm linking to and that would be managed by someone outside my department. Additionally, there is a lot of content on that site that would need to be transitioned over to one of the newer versions of SharePoint so it would be a major project there. I was hoping that there was some sort of workaround that I could use until my company is ready to upgrade.

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