ReplaceMagic Case Studies

How organisations across industries used ReplaceMagic to repair broken document links at scale after migrations, consolidations and restructuring projects.

All case studies below are based on real project profiles. Customer names and identifying details are anonymised.

Case Study 1: Global Manufacturing Company — SharePoint Online Migration

Industry: Manufacturing

Size: 15,000+ employees, 12 departments

Migration type: File server to SharePoint Online

Documents affected: 180,000

Links identified: 2.3 million

Challenge

A global manufacturing company had accumulated 180,000 Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio) across file servers covering 12 departments over 15 years. The organisation was migrating the entire estate to SharePoint Online. All embedded UNC paths of the form \\CORP-FS01\Company\Docs\ would become broken once the source file servers were decommissioned, as SharePoint Online uses HTTPS URLs rather than UNC paths. The migration was scheduled over a single weekend and had a hard go-live deadline.

Solution

ReplaceMagic was run against the file server estate two weeks before migration day. The pre-migration scan identified 2.3 million embedded links across the 180,000 documents and produced a complete inventory categorised by link type, department, and document format. The project team used this inventory to configure replacement rules that would convert each UNC path pattern to the corresponding SharePoint Online URL.

On the weekend of migration, after SharePoint Online was fully provisioned and all documents had been copied across, ReplaceMagic executed all replacement rules in a single automated pass against the documents on SharePoint. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Visio files were all processed. No documents needed to be opened in Office at any point.

Result

The migration completed on schedule. Zero manual document intervention was required to repair broken links. The post-migration scan confirmed that all 2.3 million previously valid links resolved correctly on SharePoint Online. The project team had a complete audit log of every change made to every document.

Case Study 2: European Financial Institution — Server Consolidation

Industry: Financial services

Size: Regional institution, 3,500 staff

Migration type: 3 file servers consolidated into 1

Documents affected: 95,000

Compliance requirement: Original file dates must be preserved

Challenge

A European financial institution was consolidating three legacy file servers (FS-NORTH, FS-SOUTH, FS-CENTRAL) into a single new server (FS-MAIN) as part of an infrastructure cost reduction programme. The 95,000 documents on these servers contained cross-server links: documents on FS-NORTH referenced files on FS-SOUTH, and vice versa. After consolidation, all three old server names would be invalid. The compliance team required that original document creation and modification dates be preserved for regulatory audit purposes, ruling out approaches that involved re-saving through Office.

Solution

Three separate replacement rules were configured in ReplaceMagic, one for each old server name. All three rules ran simultaneously in a single pass across all 95,000 documents. ReplaceMagic operates directly on document file formats without involving the Office application, which means original file system timestamps are preserved. The entire replacement operation ran overnight.

Result

All links across all 95,000 documents were repaired in under four hours. Original file creation and modification timestamps were preserved throughout, satisfying the compliance team's audit requirements. The consolidation project completed on time with no post-migration link-related support tickets.

Case Study 3: Government Agency — Folder Restructuring for Compliance

Sector: Government / Public sector

Migration type: Folder restructuring for filing standards compliance

Documents affected: 45,000

Links identified: 340,000

Estimated manual effort: 6 months

Challenge

A government agency was required by new information management standards to restructure its entire document filing hierarchy to a mandatory year-based folder structure. Documents previously stored in flat departmental folders (e.g. \\GovFS\Dept\Finance\Reports\) were to be moved into year-stratified paths (e.g. \\GovFS\Dept\Finance\2024\Reports\). The restructuring would break all cross-references between documents, as the relative depth of every path would change. An internal estimate put the manual repair effort at six months of full-time work for two people.

Solution

A pre-migration ReplaceMagic scan revealed 340,000 embedded links across the 45,000 documents, far more than the agency had anticipated. The scan report was used to identify all unique path patterns that would change as a result of the restructuring, and a comprehensive set of replacement rules was configured. The rules were tested in Preview mode against a representative sample of documents before being applied to the full estate.

The folder restructuring and the link repair were executed on the same day: folders were moved first, then ReplaceMagic updated all embedded paths to match the new structure. The process was completed in one working day.

Result

All 340,000 links were repaired in one working day, compared to the six-month manual estimate. Post-migration link validation confirmed that all links resolved correctly in the new structure. The agency met its compliance deadline and the project required no additional headcount.

Case Study 4: Global Professional Services Firm — SharePoint Tenant-to-Tenant Migration

Industry: Professional services

Size: Global firm, 8,000 staff

Migration type: SharePoint tenant-to-tenant (acquisition)

Post-migration link integrity: 99.7%

Challenge

Following a company acquisition, the acquired firm's SharePoint Online tenant needed to be merged into the acquiring organisation's tenant. The acquired firm had 62,000 documents in SharePoint Online, many of which contained ID-based links (SharePoint item IDs used in cross-document references created by Office). These ID-based links would not survive the tenant boundary: the target tenant assigns new item IDs, rendering all ID-based references permanently broken regardless of how the files are moved.

Additionally, all URL-based hyperlinks containing the source tenant domain (acquiredfirm.sharepoint.com) would need to be updated to the target tenant domain (acquiringfirm.sharepoint.com) after migration.

Solution

The project used the Replacements Preparation Package service offered by Webtime Corporation in combination with ReplaceMagic. In the preparation phase, the source tenant was scanned to identify all ID-based links and convert them to their equivalent absolute URLs before migration. This transformation was validated pre-migration to confirm that every ID-based link resolved correctly as an absolute URL.

After migration to the target tenant, ReplaceMagic performed the domain replacement across all documents: all occurrences of acquiredfirm.sharepoint.com were replaced with acquiringfirm.sharepoint.com in a single automated pass. The combination of pre-migration ID resolution and post-migration URL substitution addressed both link types comprehensively.

Result

Post-migration link integrity was validated at 99.7%. The 0.3% of links that could not be automatically repaired were documents where the source file had been deleted from the source tenant prior to migration and therefore had no valid target URL. These were reported in the audit log for manual follow-up. The migration completed within the planned project window with no business disruption.