User’s Guide — LinkFixer Advanced

Chapter 1 — Introduction

In the “old days”, renaming, moving or re-pathing files or folders didn’t create any major problems — we just used the DOS rename command or Windows Explorer to make the changes and everything was fine (most of the time). These days, however, many different types of files such as Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and PDF files include links that point to other files.

If one or more of those linked files are renamed or moved, such as a GIF graphics file, then Microsoft Excel, web browsers, or other applications will consider the file to be “missing” or report that the link to it is broken. As a result, the linked files will not be displayed, the document will not be able to use the linked files, or the information originally provided by the now-missing linked file will become out of date.

While a single missing file and a single broken link may not be a problem to manually find and fix, what if there were 1,000, 100,000, or even 1,000,000 linked files that may have been renamed or perhaps even moved from one location to another? That could mean 1,000, 100,000 or even 1,000,000 broken links. Now that would be a problem!

LinkFixer Advanced to the Rescue

What if you could find those missing files and automatically correct all the broken links so that Microsoft Excel, web browsers, or other applications can correctly display and use them? This is just one of the many valuable features available using LinkFixer Advanced!

How and When to Use LinkFixer Advanced

The best time to use LinkFixer Advanced is before moving any of your files, while the links are still working. For example, if your company is planning to move its documents into a document management system such as SharePoint, the best time to use LinkFixer Advanced is before moving any files. LinkFixer Advanced can protect the working links in your files so that they can be automatically repaired after they are broken by the move. Or LinkFixer Advanced can move the files itself using its Move/Rename process, while automatically preserving each of the working links as it moves each file.

On the other hand, LinkFixer Advanced can also be of tremendous assistance if you have already moved or renamed your files — and broken their links in the process. In many cases, LinkFixer Advanced can fix the links that are already broken, using the Modify Links process. All you have to do is supply a list of the changes that occurred in the file names and locations when the files were moved. LinkFixer Advanced can then use the same patterns to automatically repair the broken links in one or more batches, saving time, money, effort — and maybe even someone’s job.

Definitions

There are a few words that you will need to know to best understand how to use LinkFixer Advanced. Please take a few minutes to read the following definitions and the accompanying examples:

• A parent file is a file that contains one or more links that point to some other file or files.
• A child file is a file that is pointed to by a link in a parent file.
• A link is a connection from one file to another file.Specifically, a link is the information contained in a parent file that connects it to a child file. A link tells your computer what child file to display or to collect data from and where to find that child file. A link may point to the whole child file, or it may point to something specific inside the child file, like a range of spreadsheet cells or certain text.

Example: If the file “Finance.xls” contained a link pointing to the file “Chart.xls”, then “Finance.xls” would be the parent file and “Chart.xls” would be the child file. As you can see in the graphic below, the link contains the data needed to 1) find the correct file, 2) fetch a pie chart from within that child file, and then 3) display it in the parent file.

Example: If the Microsoft Word file “Report.doc” contained a link to the graphics file “Graphic.bmp”, then the file “Report.doc” would be the parent file and the “Graphic.bmp” graphics file would be the child file. In this case, the link is instructing the computer to find a specific graphics file and pull a particular picture from that file and then display it in the parent file.

Whether it’s fetching graphics, text, account numbers, financial figures, or it would open a web page when clicked on, you always have these three fundamental elements involved: a parent file containing a link that defines a connection to a specific child file.

What, Really, Is a “Broken Link”?

Broken Link — A link that is pointing to a file or a location which is not found. (Additionally, a link can be broken because it points to a specific location inside a file that is not found, even if the file itself is found. For example, when an Excel worksheet is renamed or deleted, breaking links to that worksheet or to a location inside that worksheet.)

When a link gets “broken”, most of the time the cause is one of the following:

• Someone moved, renamed or deleted the child file that the link points to.
• Someone moved or renamed the folder or drive containing the child file.
• The child file is stored someplace (like a network drive) that is not currently accessible.

In short, the location defined in the link no longer points to the child file, so the link is broken (temporarily or permanently).

To fix a broken link manually you have to:

1. Find the new location of the child file.
2. Ensure you have the correct child file — the exact one to which the link should be pointed, not some other similar file and not the wrong version of the file.
3. Open the “guts” of the parent file.
4. Find the exact link in that parent file.
5. Modify the data in the link so it includes the new, correct path to the child file.
6. Save and close the parent file.

The above procedure is lengthy but manageable if you are only dealing with a couple of dozen broken links. But what if you have hundreds, thousands, or even millions of links that became broken (or will be broken) during some sort of data migration or file system restructuring? Now we are talking hundreds (if not thousands) of man-hours to fix manually. Fixing broken links manually tends to take orders of magnitude more time than breaking those links by migrating them in the first place. This is where LinkFixer Advanced comes in.

Plus, what if there were a way to protect your links from this situation in the first place? If you could do that, you would not need to know where a child file got moved or how its path may have changed. By using LinkFixer Advanced, you don’t need to know any of the details about what happened to all your child files — and you can still have your links fixed automatically.

Overview

One of the primary features of LinkFixer Advanced is its unique ability to automatically maintain links when moving or renaming files in batch. Additionally, using LinkFixer Advanced, you can safeguard working links in parent files so they can automatically be repaired should they become broken in the future. Here’s how the automatic link repair process works:

If you have another application that you need to use to do your migration or make the changes to your naming convention, you can still protect your links and make handling them a snap, by using LinkFixer Advanced’s Inoculate & Cure process.

First, use the Inoculate process to safeguard all of the working (healthy) links in your parent files, which point to other child files.

Next, using Windows Explorer (or some other program such as RoboCopy), you can rename some or all of your parent or child files and even move some or all of them to different folders. You can rename them to anything you want and move them to any location on your system that you want.

Then, to ensure that all of the links in your parent files are updated so that none of them are broken as a result of the renaming or moving of the files, you would run the Cure process. All of your parent files will be updated automatically so that all of their links once again point to the renamed or moved child files.

And if you move or rename parent or child files using the Move/Rename process of LinkFixer Advanced, then your job is already done. All of the link information contained in the selected parent files is automatically updated when the parent and child files are moved or renamed.

Using LinkFixer Advanced, you can move or rename your parent and child files without having to worry about “breaking” links in your parent files.

But what if you (or someone) already made a bunch of changes to your file system and broke lots of links? Is there anything that can be done to recover missing files (repair links) and without spending hundreds of man-hours?

Yes.

You can use LinkFixer Advanced’s powerful Modify process to accomplish bulk changes to as many links as you like, all in one go.

What else can LinkFixer Advanced do?

LinkFixer Advanced is a very powerful program. In addition to its ability to automatically maintain links when moving or renaming files in batch, LinkFixer Advanced also gives you several very useful capabilities and features, detailed below.

1. Automatically Safeguarding Links

Safeguard healthy links in parent files, allowing them to be automatically fixed when they become broken.

Fix broken links in safeguarded parent files automatically.

Generate a broken link report listing all parent files containing broken links, so they can be fixed before causing problems.

Link Reports

Generate a regular report listing each parent file followed by a list of the child files it links to.

Generate a cross-reference report listing each linked file followed by a list of all the parent files that point to it.

Report whether a file is being pointed to by any parent file anywhere on a user’s system, thereby letting the user know whether the file is safe to delete.

Perform sophisticated global search and replace operations on links contained in large batches of parent files with a single command.

In short, if you use links in your files, then you need LinkFixer Advanced.

Chapter 2 — We’ll Make (Almost) Any Enhancements You Want!

We Welcome Your Suggestions (Really)

LinkFixer Advanced is a powerful program. Nonetheless, we realize that you, a skilled and creative IT professional, will think of ways in which it can be improved. We invite you to tell us your ideas.

We’d like to make LinkFixer Advanced perform every function you could ever imagine such a product being able to do. We intend to make you such a satisfied LinkFixer Advanced customer that you can’t wait for the next user group meeting, so you can tell your friends and associates how much you like LinkFixer Advanced and how strongly you recommend it.

Your suggestions on how to improve any aspect of LinkFixer Advanced are most welcome. This includes our documentation, our technical support, and the software itself.

If you encounter any difficulties whatsoever, please send a detailed email to Support@LinkTek.com. Please include as much information about your computing environment, the problem that you are experiencing, and exactly what you did when the problem occurred. Also, be sure to include any appropriate screenshots, process report files, and log files.

Chapter 3 — Overview

What is this chapter for?

This chapter is to answer the following questions in broad terms:

• Where do I start with LinkFixer Advanced?

• What does my overall migration look like? (What are all the big steps I will need to run?)

Fundamentals

LinkFixer Advanced’s primary focus is keeping your links working and getting your broken links working.

Looking at it in its simplest form, you could use LinkFixer Advanced to perform any of the following actions:

• Find out all about your files and links.
• Prepare your working (not broken) links for migration and automatic repair post-migration.
• Fix broken links (before or after migration).
• Modify links in virtually any way. (LinkFixer Advanced offers multiple ways to modify your links.)
• Move your files from one place to another, even from one storage system to another.
• Rename your files.

How do I use LinkFixer Advanced to help with my specific situation?

Let’s start by listing some common scenarios where LinkFixer Advanced can bring substantial value:

• Migrating from network shares to cloud storage, including SharePoint Online.
• Migrating files from one cloud storage system to another cloud storage system. For example, migrating from Box.com to SharePoint Online.
• Migrating files from SharePoint On-Premises (self-hosted SharePoint) to SharePoint Online (cloud-hosted SharePoint)
• Re-organizing files and folders in many storage systems, including SharePoint Online.
• Fixing broken links regardless of when they were broken
• Fixing links that broke due to a less-than-optimum migration that already happened before you knew about LinkFixer Advanced.

There are tons of other scenarios where LinkFixer Advanced can deliver deep value. The above are good start.

LinkFixer Advanced offers multiple processes. Which ones do I need for my specific situation?

LinkFixer Advanced is not just powerful — it is also versatile. Its processes can work together to get the result you need, even in extremely difficult situations.

Tip: You can use just the parts of LinkFixer Advanced that you need. You don’t have to use every process just because that process is available in LinkFixer Advanced.

All that matters is what you need in order to meet your goals.

Process Overview (“Cheat Sheet”)

Now we’ll list each process and tell you when (generally speaking) you would use that. This is a sort of “cheat sheet” to give you an idea of when you would use a given LinkFixer Advanced process. 

• Scan Only: Run this as the first thing you do with LinkFixer Advanced. This will collect data about all your links, which will help you make great decisions. 
• Inoculate: Your links work. You want to move your files someplace, which will break a lot of your links. Run Inoculate to prepare your links so they can be automatically fixed after you break the links by moving or renaming the files. Inoculated links are considered “protected” as they can be automatically fixed by the Cure process in the future.
• Cure: Use this to automatically fix broken links which were inoculated before you broke them.
• Modify Links: Use this for unprotected links that aren’t working.

Or use this to do things like making relative links become absolute links (or vice versa), changing the capitalization of links, and so on. There’s a lot of power here and LinkFixer Advanced gives you a lot of control.

• Move/Rename: Use this to move or rename files with LinkFixer Advanced. If your links were already working before you run Move/Rename, the Move/Rename process can automatically keep those links working as part of the process. This way you don’t have an extra step of fixing your links after moving them.

Move/Rename Tip: Even if you don’t use our Move/Rename feature, you can still get LinkFixer Advanced’s substantial link repair benefits.

If you need to use a different software product to do the file moving part of your migration, that is totally okay. You can still use LinkFixer Advanced to keep your links working.

Perhaps you have some product (free or otherwise) which has unique file moving features which are important to you. 

In this case, you would run Inoculate (before moving your files, while their links are still working) and Cure (after moving your files, to automatically repair the links broken by moving the files with that other software product).

And if you have some links which were already broken before you moved your files, you can use LinkFixer Advanced’s Modify Links to fix those links.

Do whatever fits your needs. And know that LinkFixer Advanced will help you fix your links even in situations that you may have assumed were hopeless.

• Reports: Use this to run reports from information already stored in the LinkFixer Advanced database about your files and links. Use this any time you wish.
• Clean: Only run this if instructed to do so by LinkTek Support. It removes inoculation data from files and links, which is rarely needed.

Okay. I know what the LinkFixer Advanced processes are. Now what?

Well, what do you need to get done? What’s your definition of a successful migration and what are the barriers to that? What’s your timeline?

We suggest you contact LinkTek Support (727-442-1822) so our LinkFixer Advanced experts can give you advice tailored to your exact needs. We will swiftly advise you and set you off on a successful path intended to help you with whatever is most important to you.

Migrations are huge and seldom simple. Can LinkFixer Advanced help me with messy situations?

Short answer: Absolutely! LinkFixer Advanced can help with the messiest of link repair situations.

Migrations are messy, mostly because they’re large. Migrations tend to involve a lot of files and a lot of users who depend on those files.

Our users tell us there is seldom enough calendar time (and personnel) budgeted for getting migrations done right. Plus your colleagues probably expect their links to be working again first thing in the morning, no matter how huge and impossible the migration was that you performed the night before (or over the weekend, or over the holiday).

Here are some especially messy (but also very common) situations which LinkFixer Advanced users frequently run into. LinkFixer Advanced can help with all of these situations and a million more:

• You have a combination of broken links and working links. You haven’t moved your files yet.
• You have a combination of broken links and working links. You have already moved your files.
• You have no idea how many broken links you have, before or after your migration.
• You already migrated some or all of your files (without using LinkFixer Advanced) and broke a lot of links. You didn’t inoculate those links first. Maybe you didn’t even have LinkFixer Advanced until after you moved your files.
• Some migration vendor (selling a service or software, or both) told you they could fix your links. But they let you down — they either missed too many links, or they were too slow. And your users (and your management) want the links working now.
• Your migration is so big it will take months or years.
• Your migration is so big you have to do it in pieces.
• You need to target specific file types or specific links.
• You have an impossible deadline for completing your migration (including fixing your links).

Confidence

If you have read this entire chapter, we hope that you now:

• • Have confidence that LinkFixer Advanced is serious about fixing your links.
  • Have at least a rough idea of how LinkFixer Advanced can help you.
  • Know where to get started with LinkFixer Advanced. Hint: Get started by running Scan Only to find out about your links. This will tell you if they’re working or broken and it will tell you which files link to which other files.

• Know that we will help you every step of the way.

• Know how to reach us. Hint: Email LinkTek Support or call LinkTek Support at 727-442-1822.

Chapter 4 — Getting Help

How do I get help with LinkFixer Advanced?

No matter what you are doing with LinkFixer Advanced, LinkTek Support is here to help you. No question is too small.

Please reach out if we can be of any service to you in removing ambiguity or confusion from your migration. We will do our very best to help you get the most out of LinkFixer Advanced.

Here are the support resources we offer:

• Live telephone support. Call LinkTek Support at 727-442-7774. Our hours of operation are 9:00AM to 5:30PM Monday through Friday (including some holidays) in the Eastern time zone of the United States.
• Email: Support@LinkTek.com
• Our self-guided support knowledge base: https://linktek.com/links/support
• From inside LinkFixer Advanced, you can create a new support ticket by picking ☰ | Support Ticket. Using that feature, you can submit some files (or no files) and you can tell us what you need help with. Real LinkFixer Advanced experts read every one of these and we will reach out to you to help you.

If you have any doubt or confusion (or anything resembling doubt or confusion), or if you just want someone to run your migration ideas by, please contact us.

We care about the success of your migration.

Chapter 5 — Information Security

Visit Our Knowledge Base

Information security is as important to us as successful migrations. You should never have to choose between secure and effective.

Please read our self-help knowledge base article on this subject, located here. 

Chapter 6 — Requirements

Software Update Notifications (Extremely Important!)

It is critically important that you provide access to both of the following internet sites to every Windows user who will run LinkFixer Advanced:

• https://linktek.com/ —  port 80
• https://s3.amazonaws.com/ — port 443

For more information, please read https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/Resource_Ports.html.

Important Note: Lack of access to either of those sites could prevent you from being notified about critical updates to LinkFixer Advanced. We strongly recommend that you ensure your network does not block access to these sites.

To confirm that these sites are not blocked by your firewall (or are inaccessible for any other reason), choose {☰} | Check for Updates. If there is a problem, you will be notified when you press this button that there was a problem checking for updates.

Hardware and Software Requirements

Operating Systems

Supported operating systems:

• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows 10
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019

Other Software

• Microsoft SQL Server is required for optimal performance. This does not need to be installed on the same computer as LinkFixer Advanced.

• .NET 4.6.1 Framework. This will be installed along with LinkFixer Advanced if not already installed.
• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017. This will be installed along with LinkFixer Advanced if not already installed.

Ports

• Ports that must remain open are:

• Port 80 — HTTP
• Port 443 — HTTPS, for Amazon S3
• Port 53 — DNS
• Port 8080 — HTTP
• Port 22 — Support Channel
• Port 123 — NTP
• Port 111 — Amazon Data
• Port 2049 — NFS
• Port 20048 — NFS v3
• Port 139 — SMB v2
• Port 445 — SMB v3

For more information, please read this article: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/Resource_Ports.html.

• Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) IP Address Ranges: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/Welcome.html

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Important Note: The hardware requirements below are minimums. For optimum hardware requirements, please contact LinkTek Support at 727-442-1822 or email Support@LinkTek.com so that we can discuss your specific needs.

• Four processor cores are required as a minimum. Using 16 processor cores on every LinkFixer Advanced computer is strongly recommended for faster processing.
• 16 gigabytes of RAM are required as a minimum. Using 64 gigabytes of RAM is strongly recommended for a greater (faster) experience. (4 CPUs to 16 GB RAM, or 8 CPUs to 32 GB RAM, or 16 CPUs to 64 GB RAM). You should provision CPU cores and RAM in a 1 (CPU core) to 4 (GB RAM) ratio.
• Recommended: 200 gigabytes of available hard disk space. System free space must be at least 150 GB after installing LinkFixer Advanced.
• Multiple computers to share the processing load are also recommended. In many cases, you can distribute LinkFixer Advanced’s workload across multiple computers. This can dramatically increase your processing speed and thus shorten your migration jobs.

File-level Passwords and Encryption

You need to remove any file-level password protection or encryption from your files for LinkFixer Advanced to be able to process them, unless the files are Word or Excel filetypes.

For information on processing password-protected Excel and Word files, please see the dedicated chapter on that subject later in this guide.

File System Permissions

• Full control access to the folder “C:\ProgramData\LinkTek\LinkFixer Advanced\”. Access should include all files and subfolders.
• Full control access to the folder “C:\Users\Public\Desktop\LinkFixer Advanced\”. Access should include all files and subfolders.

Internet Access (License Activation)

• Access to https://secure.softwarekey.com

SharePoint On-Premises Permissions

• Domain user account which must be a Site Collection Administrator and must have read/write access to the Active Directory Domain

SharePoint Online Permissions

• Domain user account which must be a SharePoint Online Site Collection Administrator and must have read/write access to the Active Directory domain
• Access to https://sharepoint.com
• Access to the domain https://microsoftonline.com

Important: Your Windows user account must have read and write access to every network location, server, share, directory, and file that LinkFixer Advanced will be instructed to process.

Database Requirements

The default database installed by LinkFixer Advanced is SQLite, which is suitable for testing and small production jobs up to 100 gigabytes. SQLite is not suitable for processing larger numbers of files and links. SQLite will cause LinkFixer Advanced to process your files far more slowly than with a SQL Server database installation.

All production installations will require that you connect LinkFixer Advanced to a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 or newer SQL Server database server. We do not recommend using Microsoft SQL Express. It has limitations that are very likely to result in performance bottlenecks. The evaluation version of SQL Server (which is not provided in the LinkFixer Advanced installation) provides access to all of SQL Server’s features for 180 days.

SQL Server Advantages

There are some very important advantages to using SQL Server (even SQL Server Express) instead of SQLite. These include:

• LinkFixer Advanced will process your files and links faster, both because SQL Server is faster and because using SQL Server allows LinkFixer Advanced to process more files using multiple threads at the same time. Multi-threading will automatically be enabled as soon as you switch from SQLite to SQL Server.
• If your license permits, you will be able to install and run multiple instances of LinkFixer Advanced at the same time and connect these instances to the same LinkFixer Advanced database.

Configuring SQL Server

If you already have SQL Server installed, have your database administrator make a new database specifically for LinkFixer Advanced. LinkFixer Advanced will automatically create the necessary database schema when it first accesses the database. The exact steps to install SQL Server are outside the scope of this guide, but instructions for performing a basic installation using SQL Server’s defaults is available from Microsoft:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/install-sql-server-from-the-installation-wizard-setup?view=sql-server-ver15

Note: LinkFixer Advanced requires the use of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 or newer.

Also, the following is important to know regarding the SQL Server database:

1. LinkFixer Advanced requires a blank database that the LinkFixer Advanced user has read/write access to.
2. LinkFixer Advanced requires the default schema to be used for the database.
3. When LinkFixer Advanced creates its schema, it does not use named schemas and expects its schema to be the default (“dbo”). There should not be any conflict with other schemas, as LinkFixer Advanced only uses and requires a single schema for its operation. For more information, see the following article under the section titled “Default Schema”:

​https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd283095%28v=sql.100%29.aspx

Microsoft SQL Server Database Requirements

Our Microsoft SQL Server database minimums are:

• SQL Server database initial size: 500MB or more
• SQL server log initial size: 8MB or more
• Database autogrowth: 250MB or more
• Log autogrowth: 250MB or more
• Windows account must have read/write permissions.
• SQL Server account must have read/write permissions.

SQL Server Database Permissions

The database permissions of the LinkFixer Advanced user should be set to “db_owner”.

Detailed instructions for provisioning and configuring SQL Server are automatically presented in a pop-up screen in LinkFixer Advanced when you select SQL Server as the database provider in the “Options | Database” screen.

Testing the Connection

Be sure you select the database from the box and test that your database connection works.

Where to Install LinkFixer Advanced

Where on your network you install LinkFixer Advanced can have a profound effect on the speed at which LinkFixer Advanced can process your files and links. In general, you should install LinkFixer Advanced as close as possible to both the data you intend to process and as close as possible to your SQL Server database. The images below illustrate the relative speed and efficiency of various network configurations.

LinkFixer Advanced will generally work fastest when it is installed in the same location as your files and your SQL Server.

Processing speeds will always be relatively slow if you install LinkFixer Advanced in your local data center but configure it to process files that are located in a remote data center. This speed reduction is a result of network latency between the data centers.

We strongly recommend that you avoid installing LinkFixer Advanced at a distance from your SQL Server. LinkFixer Advanced communicates even more frequently with the SQL Server database than it does with your files. So, any network latency introduced between LinkFixer Advanced and the database will have even more of a negative effect on speed than distance between LinkFixer Advanced and your data set.

The worst-case scenario would be if you install LinkFixer Advanced in a location that is remote from both the SQL Server database and your data.

Notice also that running only one instance of LinkFixer Advanced will always be slower than running multiple instances with each instance pointed to a different segment of your data.

Administrator privileges are required for installation.

You must have Administrator privileges to install LinkFixer Advanced on your computer. If you do not have Administrator privileges, you will need to get an Administrator to install LinkFixer Advanced for you. We also strongly recommend that LinkFixer Advanced be operated only by a user with Administrator privileges, as LinkFixer Advanced requires “read-write” access to any files it will be processing.

Chapter 7 — Installation

Installation Steps

To install LinkFixer Advanced on your computer, navigate to the downloaded “SetupLFA.exe” file and double-click on it to start the installation wizard.

Note: The default installation location for LinkFixer Advanced is “C:\Program Files (x86)\LinkTek\LinkFixer Advanced\”.

The version of the license agreement seen in this picture is for example purposes only. The license agreement version shown in the actual installer may differ.

The installer will present you with your choices for confirmation before installation begins.

If you do not have Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable installed on your computer, the installer will present you with the following screen to install it.

If you do not have Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 installed on your computer, the installer will prompt you to install it.

If you see a message that asks you to restart your computer, choose {Restart Later}. You can restart your computer after the LinkFixer Advanced installation is complete.

• Activating LinkFixer Advanced

If you purchased a license for LinkFixer Advanced, you will need to activate that license any time you install LinkFixer Advanced on a different computer. LinkFixer Advanced installs initially as a trial version, with trial version limitations. The activation process transforms the trial version to a fully-licensed instance. Below are the steps to activate your LinkFixer Advanced license.

• Activate License

Go to ☰ | Activate License. Then press {Activate License} and enter the License ID and password that were provided when you purchased your license.

• Activation Method

Select an activation method.

1. Online Activation

Choose “Online” if your computer is connected to the internet.

 

Click {Activate}. You should receive a message saying that activation succeeded.

1. Offline Activation

If your computer is not connected to the internet, use the offline activation method. This method requires that you generate a license “request” file and send that request to the licensing server using a computer that does have internet access.

 

Click {Save} and select the location to save the “Request.xml” file. Click {Next}.

 

Convey the “Request.xml” file, along with the web address of the licensing server, to a computer that has internet access. Access the licensing server by pasting the web address into a browser. You can either copy and paste the contents of the “Request.xml” file into the screen, or you can browse to the “Request.xml” file and upload it to the server. Then click {Submit}.

On the “Response” page, click {Download} and download the “response” file to your local computer. This “Response.xml” file must be conveyed to, and installed on, the offline computer to complete the activation process.

1. Response File

Convey the “Response.xml” file to the offline computer. From the LinkFixer Advanced “Response File” screen, click the “Load…” button and browse to the location of the “Response.xml” file.

 

After you have loaded the “Response.xml” file, click {Activate}. You will receive a message that says you have successfully activated LinkFixer Advanced.

Warning: Do not cancel or exit from the “Offline Activation” process until you have received, loaded, and activated your license using the “Response.xml” file. The “Request” and “Response” files from one session are not interchangeable with those of a prior or subsequent session. If you close the offline activation screen and start again later, you will need to start the entire “Offline Activation” process again from the beginning. The “Response.xml” file that was generated by the license server from your first “Request.xml” file will not work in a subsequent activation session.

• — Uninstalling

1. 1. How to Uninstall LinkFixer Advanced

To uninstall LinkFixer Advanced, click on your Windows {Start} button. Select Settings | Control Panel. Double-click the “Add/Remove Programs” entry. Select LinkFixer Advanced from the list of displayed programs, and then click the {Add/Remove} button. This will begin the uninstall process that allows you to remove LinkFixer Advanced from your computer.

• — Quick Start

1. () Write a new quick start.

• — The Home Screen

1. 1. How can LinkFixer Advanced help you today?

This chapter is about the LinkFixer Advanced “home screen”. This is the place from which you launch any of LinkFixer Advanced’s primary processes, like Inoculate and Cure.

The primary LinkFixer Advanced processes are:

• Scan Only
• Inoculate
• Cure
• Move/Rename
• Modify Links

That leaves two secondary processes, which are located on the ☰ menu:

• Reports
• Clean Files
  

1. How do you tell LinkFixer Advanced what to do?

Every LinkFixer Advanced process is organized into a series of simple configuration steps. In each step you make a few choices about what you want LinkFixer Advanced to do. Then you move to the next step of that process till you’re ready to run it.

Each step has its own tab on the navigation bar at the top of the process’s window. Clicking on a step’s tab will open that step’s page. Here’s the step navigation bar for the Inoculate process:

As you can see above, there are six steps to defining an Inoculate job and each one has its own tab on this bar.

1. Next, Next, Next

In each step, you’ll have a big, blue {Next Step…} button directing you to the next step. For example, here is a picture of the button which takes you from Select Folders to Select Files:

You don’t have to use those buttons. You can click on any step’s tab on the navigation bar if you prefer to jump around, or if you need to go back to a previous step.

When setting up a LinkFixer Advanced process (like Inoculate) in order to run it on your files, you will go from left to right setting up each step to configure that process. You pick your folders, you filter certain files and links in or out. That kind of thing.

Once your process is configured (you’ve made your choices in each configuration step), LinkFixer Advanced lets you preview the result of your process before you run it. That’s the Preview tab.

Then you can double-check a few critical settings in the Process Files tab.

When you are satisfied that your process has been set up the way you want, you run it on your files by pressing a big, green {Run <Process Name>} button, which looks like this:

You can’t miss it.

During and after processing, you can view the results of that process in the View Results page. While a process is running, you cannot leave the View Results page.

• Which steps are included in each process?

This table shows you which steps are included in each LinkFixer Advanced process. In this table, each process has its own row and each step has its own column.

		Include the Following Steps
		Select Folders	Choose Report	Select Files	Select Links	Create Rules	Preview	Process Files	Run Report	View Results
These Processes	Scan Only	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓
	Inoculate	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓
	Cure	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓
	Modify Links	✓	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓
	Move/Rename	✓	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓
	Reports	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
	Clean	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✓

Table: “These Processes Include the Following Steps”

1. Table Key

✓ = This process includes the indicated step.

✗ = This process does not include the indicated step.

• — The Main Menu ☰

Various LinkFixer Advanced features are available on a menu displayed by the {☰} button in the top-left corner of the main window:

Clicking on that button displays the following menu:

 

• — Network Locations

1. 1. What is Network Locations for?

Network Locations is an important LinkFixer Advanced window which:

• Lets you connect LinkFixer Advanced to cloud services, like SharePoint and Box.
• Shows you your existing (thus available to LinkFixer Advanced) Windows network shares.
• Lets you connect to a SQL database for LinkFixer Advanced to treat as a file (not as LinkFixer Advanced’s database).

Tip: You set up LinkFixer Advanced’s database in Settings | Database.

You open Network Locations by choosing Settings | Network Locations.

Here is what Network Locations looks like:

Here’s what Network Locations looks like once you’ve defined a SharePoint site in it:

In the image above, the SharePoint row is blue because it is selected. (Subdomain redacted.)

You can only select one entry (row) in Network Locations at a time.

1. Network Locations Buttons
   1. {Add…}

Here are the options available from the {Add…} button:

1. {Edit…}

Select a cloud service (or SQL Server) entry and press {Edit…} to change its settings.

1. {Remove}

Use {Remove} to remove the selected cloud service or SQL Server entry from Network Locations.

1. {Remove All}

Use {Remove} to remove all cloud service and SQL Server entries from Network Locations.

1. {Refresh}

Use {Refresh} to retry the connection to the selected cloud service or SQL Server, in case the connection failed to be established when you first opened Network Locations.

1. {Refresh All}

Use {Refresh} to retry every connection (including network shares), in case more than one connection failed to be established when you first opened Network Locations.

1. {Import…} and {Export…}

Export your SharePoint Network Locations entries to a CSV file named SharePointNetworkLocations.csv.

Then edit that CSV file (in, say, Microsoft Excel). When you are done, re-import your edited connections into LinkFixer Advanced. Or import those connections into LinkFixer Advanced running on another computer.

Another good reason to export your SharePoint Network Locations entries is to save a copy for re-use in the future.

1. Network Share Network Locations

LinkFixer Advanced displays your existing network shares in Network Locations.

Note: You cannot edit Windows network shares in Network Locations. Manage your Windows network shares outside of LinkFixer Advanced. For example, you can use The Windows File Manager tool for this.

1. Box Network Locations

Use this to create a connection to your enterprise’s Box instance.

Note: You are only allowed to create one Box entry in Network Locations at a time.

1. SharePoint Network Locations

Use this to create one or more connections to your SharePoint Online or SharePoint On-Premises instances.

1. OneDrive Network Locations

Use this to create one or more connections to your OneDrive instances.

1. OpenText Network Locations

Use this to create one or more connections to your OpenText servers. 

() Ask if we can have more than one and if it actually works.

• SQL Server Network Locations

• — Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The following section contains frequently asked questions (and answers) about LinkFixer Advanced.

Security questions deserve their own section. They can be found in the chapter following this one.

1. What are the limitations of the limited-time trial version of LinkFixer Advanced?

• A maximum of 100,000 files or 100GB of data (whichever is reached first) can be scanned at a time.
• The Inoculate, Cure, Modify Links and Move/Rename processes will process up to 500 links per function per day, and up to a total of 5,000 links per function during the limited-time trial, for all supported file types except CAD files.
• For CAD files (DWG and DGN), the limits are 100 links per function per day, and up to a total of 1,000 links per function during the limited-time trial.

1. Which types of files does LinkFixer Advanced support?

• Microsoft Word 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, XP, 2000, and 97 files
• Microsoft Excel 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, XP, 2000, and 97 files
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, XP, 2000, and 97 files
• Microsoft Access 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, XP, 2000, and 97 files
• Microsoft SQL Server 2017, 2016, 2014, 2012, and 2008 databases
• Microsoft Visio 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, and 2003 files
• Windows shortcut files
• Autodesk AutoCAD DWG R13–2018 files
• Bentley MicroStation DGN V8–V8i files
• Adobe Acrobat PDF 5.0–DC files
• Adobe InDesign INDD 1.5, CS, CS2, CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.5, CS6 and Creative Cloud 2015, 2016 files
• Adobe PageMaker 6.0, 6.5, and 7.0.0 files
• HTML, JS, ASP, CSS, and SWF (Flash) files
• SharePoint site pages, wiki pages, and web part pages. These three are specialized ASP (.aspx) files.
• PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF and GIF (as child files)

1. Can LinkFixer Advanced report on the links contained in my files, regardless of whether the links are broken or not?

Yes. LinkFixer Advanced can generate a variety of detailed reports showing all of the links contained in one or more of the supported types of files. And it validates the status of each of the links, determining whether they are broken or working. Even hyperlinks that point to internet web pages can be automatically checked and validated.

1. I need to move a large number of files from one location to another without breaking links. Can LinkFixer Advanced help?

Yes. LinkFixer Advanced can move or rename large batches of files and folders without causing broken links. This can be done by using either the Inoculate and Cure processes or the Move/Rename process.

1. Can LinkFixer Advanced help me to fix broken links in files that have already been moved?

Yes. Using the Modify Links process to modify the contents of links in batches of files, LinkFixer Advanced can help fix broken links in files that have already been moved.

1. Does LinkFixer Advanced work with UNC paths as well as mapped drive paths?

Yes. LinkFixer Advanced can process Universal Naming Convention (UNC) formatted links, mapped drive formatted links, even relative path formatted links. And during processing, LinkFixer Advanced recognizes the format used in a link and will automatically maintain the same formatting when the link is automatically fixed.

1. Is there a way to perform a search and replace of a server name contained in links?

Yes. This can be done using the Modify Links process which allows you to define sophisticated “rename rules” specifying how to modify the contents of links contained in a batch of parent files, including server names, folder names, file names, and more.

1. What does the “Inoculation” process do?

“Inoculation” is a patented process where a unique “link ID” value is assigned to each child file pointed to by non-broken links in a parent file. These link IDs are then embedded within the child files as well as within the links in the parent file that point to the child files. This essentially creates a secondary link between the parent file and each of its child files. Then, should a link become broken because files were either moved or renamed, the complimentary Cure process can be used to automatically fix the broken links in the parent file.

1. What does the Cure process do?

Cure is a patented process, which automatically fixes broken links in parent files that have previously been inoculated when links are broken due to files being moved or renamed. Links can be cured, in batch, automatically.

The Cure process automatically selects and cures broken links by uniquely matching link IDs found in candidate child files with link IDs stored in the links of parent files and then automatically updating links to point to the found child file.

1. What do the Move/Rename and Modify Links processes do?

The Move/Rename process allows for the definition of sophisticated rename rules telling LinkFixer Advanced how to move or rename batches of parent files and child files. And as the files are moved or renamed, LinkFixer Advanced automatically updates the links in parent files so that they do not become broken.

Additionally, the Modify Links process can be used to easily modify the content of links contained in batches of parent files, allowing the user to fix links that are already broken because of files that have already been moved, folders that were renamed, server names that were changed and more.

1. How does the link limit work? Is the link limit cumulative?

LinkFixer Advanced processes links in files up to the maximum number of links for which the program has been licensed. The link limit counter is reset after each process that is run. The link limit is not cumulative.

For example, if LinkFixer Advanced is licensed for 200,000 links, and the Scan process is being run, then a maximum of 200,000 links can be processed and reported at one time. But after the report is run, it would be possible to run another Scan process, for up to another 200,000 links.

1. What happens when the licensed link limit is reached?

If LinkFixer Advanced reaches the licensed number of links during processing, a message will be displayed stating that the limit has been reached and asking if the process should be canceled or if LinkFixer Advanced should continue with the total number of links that have been processed up to that point.

1. Can the licensed link limit be increased?

Yes. Your LinkFixer Advanced license can be increased to allow the processing of more links at any time. Simply contact your LinkFixer Advanced representative at 727-442-1822 or Info@LinkTek.com.

1. What should I do to optimize (maximize) the processing speed of LinkFixer Advanced?

While the performance of LinkFixer Advanced will vary depending upon the computing environment in which it is run, there are several performance tips that can be used to ensure that LinkFixer Advanced will operate as efficiently as possible:

• Ensure the Windows system that LinkFixer Advanced is installed on has a minimum of 8 gigabytes of available memory, and preferably at least 16 gigabytes.
• Run LinkFixer Advanced on a physical or virtual machine with multiple processors (“cores”).
• To avoid network latency, install and run LinkFixer Advanced on a computer that is as physically close as possible to the data that LinkFixer Advanced will be processing and as physically close as possible to its SQL Server database.
• Connect LinkFixer Advanced to a full SQL Server database instead of the SQLite database provided with the application and pre-allocate plenty of space to the SQL Server database. Provide at least 4 processors and a minimum of 8GB of RAM for the (virtual) machine running the SQL server.
• Reset the logging level to “Automatic” if it has been changed to “Detailed”.
• Define parent file filters in LinkFixer Advanced to include only files that need to be processed. For example, you could process only Word and Excel files, instead of processing all types of files. (Those file types are just an example.)
• Do not run other applications at the same time as LinkFixer Advanced.
• Disable Content Approval in SharePoint prior to running LinkFixer Advanced, and then re-enable Content Approval after the processing is complete.

1. Can I make backups of files during processing?

By default, LinkFixer Advanced does not automatically create backups of files that are modified during processing. However, you can tell LinkFixer Advanced to create backups of files by selecting Application | Options… and selecting the “Backup” tab. Then you can check the “Create backups of changed parent files” and check the “Create backups of changed child files” checkbox options. If disk space is a consideration during processing, turning off the creation of backups will significantly reduce the amount of space required for processing. Backup files may also be saved to another drive, or to a network share.

1. Can LinkFixer Advanced maintain a file’s original “last modified date and time”?

Yes, LinkFixer Advanced allows you to optionally maintain or update the last modified date and time of files that are processed.

1. Does LinkFixer Advanced support the processing of links contained in VBA code or macros in Microsoft Office file types?

Yes, LinkFixer Advanced does recognize user-defined “static” links contained in VBA code (macros) in Microsoft Word and Excel files.

However, processing links contained in VBA macros inside Microsoft Access file types is not currently supported. This may be made available in the future if there is sufficient need from our users. If you need this ability, please let us know at 727-442-1822 or Support@LinkTek.com.

1. When processing Microsoft Office files, do I need to have Microsoft Office installed on the same computer as LinkFixer Advanced?

No. It is not required that Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, or PowerPoint be installed on the same computer as LinkFixer Advanced. That is because LinkFixer Advanced performs “direct file access” to these types of files and does not need to use the Word, Excel, Access or PowerPoint applications when working with these files.

1. Writing LinkFixer Advanced Rules

LinkFixer Advanced has two different types of rules:

• Rules for Move/Rename and Modify Links processes. These are basically two-part “match this and change it to that” rules and both Move/Rename and Modify Links processes use the same rules language.

You write these rules in the “Create Rules” step of Move/Rename and Modify Links.

• “Expert filtering rules” — for filtering files or links. These are single-part “match this” rules. There’s no “change it to that” element as these are just for filtering files or links, not for changing them.

1. Rules for Move/Rename and Modify Links (In Create Rules Step)

In the Modify Links or the Move/Rename process, go to the “Create Rules” step to reveal this rule editor.

To find out how to write this kind of rule, you can read about them in our self-help knowledge base, or you can call or email LinkTek Support (727-442-1822). Here are some knowledge base links to get you started:

• Move/Rename rules category
• Move/Rename rules overview article

1. “Expert Filtering Rules” (In Select Files and Select Links Steps)

In the Select Files step, choose the “Process files using expert filtering rules” radio button to reveal the expert filtering rules editor for files.

In the Select Links step, choose the “Process links using expert filtering rules” radio button to reveal the expert filtering rules editor for links.

Here’s a screenshot showing the expert filtering rules editor in the Select Files step of the Inoculate process:

To find out how to write this kind of rule, please reach out to LinkTek Support via email or phone (727-442-1822). Here is one knowledge base link to get you started:

• Expert filtering rules overview article

• — SharePoint (Online and On-Premises)

1. 1. Visit Our Knowledge Base

There’s a lot to know about using LinkFixer Advanced with SharePoint. To read about this, please visit our self-help knowledge base.

Here are some direct links to help you get a fast start:

• Our overall SharePoint knowledge base article group
• A knowledge base search for the word “sharepoint”. This will find articles outside of our SharePoint article group which mention SharePoint.

1. Overview

LinkFixer Advanced has deep support for SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premises.

LinkFixer Advanced can fix supported links in SharePoint when they break. Common causes for broken links in SharePoint include:

• Moving files into SharePoint
• Moving files out of SharePoint
• Reorganizing your SharePoint sites

1. Supported SharePoint Versions

LinkFixer Advanced supports the following SharePoint versions:

• SharePoint Online
• SharePoint On-Premises 2019
• SharePoint On-Premises 2016
• SharePoint On-Premises 2013
• SharePoint On-Premises 2010

1. Required SharePoint Permissions

Every SharePoint user defined in LinkFixer Advanced’s Network Locations dialog box needs to be a Site Owner and also needs to be assigned the Site Collection Admin role.

1. Required SharePoint Modules

Web Services must be enabled and Web Services access to SharePoint must not be blocked or disabled by any firewall, proxy, or security software or settings. Please confirm this with your IT manager or SharePoint administrator.

• Introduction to SharePoint

There are two ways to move files into SharePoint while preserving the integrity of the links connecting those files to each other:

• Move/Rename or
• Inoculate, then move the files by various other means, followed by Cure

One option is to use the LinkFixer Advanced Move/Rename process to move the files into SharePoint. This will automatically preserve the links during the migration. In many cases this is the simplest and fastest way to move files into SharePoint. Moving the files and fixing the links in the files is accomplished in a single step.

If you wish to use LinkFixer Advanced to move the files into SharePoint, use the procedures described in the following section and in the “Move/Rename” sections of this user’s guide.

There are other utilities for moving files into SharePoint, but they will not protect and preserve your links. If you wish to use some other utility to move and rename files and folders, your second option is to use the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate process before the migration and the Cure process after the migration. Using this method, links will be temporarily broken during the migration, but will be repaired by the Cure process. The steps of the Inoculate and Cure method are outlined in one of the following sections of this Appendix.

 

• — Special SharePoint Pages

LinkFixer Advanced 5.8.1 introduces support for the following SharePoint-specific things:

• Site Pages
• Wiki Pages
• Web Part Pages

1. What exactly is supported?

This table details LinkFixer Advanced’s support for specific types of special SharePoint pages (site pages, wiki pages, web part pages):

Process	Site Pages	Wiki Pages	Web Part Pages
Scan Only	Supported	Supported	Supported
Modify Links	Supported	Supported	Unsupported
Reports	Supported	Supported	Supported
Move/Rename	Unsupported	Unsupported	Unsupported
Inoculate	Unsupported	Unsupported	Unsupported
Cure	Unsupported	Unsupported	Unsupported
Clean	N/A	N/A	N/A

1. Parent File or Child File?

This table covers what each of these special SharePoint pages can be to LinkFixer Advanced:

File Role	Site Pages	Wiki Pages	Web Part Pages
Parent File	Yes	Yes	Yes
Child File	Yes	Yes	Yes

1. Support for Web Parts

Site pages, wiki pages, and web part pages can all contain web parts (among other things). Navigation menus cannot contain web parts.

SharePoint treats web parts differently depending on which type of page they are located on. Here’s a handy table for how this impacts LinkFixer Advanced.

When Stored In	Web Parts Are Handled as Follows
Web Part Pages	LinkFixer Advanced processes the link to the web part itself, not the links of the items inside the web part. It also processes links stored in advanced web part properties containing links, including “Title URL”, “Description”, “Help URL”, “Catalog Icon Image URL”, and “Title Icon Image URL” property fields found in the Advanced section of the web part editor sidebar. Note: This is different from how web parts in site pages are handled.
Site Pages	LinkFixer Advanced processes the links to items inside the web part as if those links were directly on the site page. It does not process the link to the web part itself. Note: This is different from how web parts in web part pages are handled.
Wiki Pages	Due to a limitation in SharePoint itself, LinkFixer Advanced does not support web parts located on wiki pages. Tip: If you specifically need this supported, please let us know at Support@LinkTek.com!
Navigation Menus	SharePoint does not support putting web parts in navigation menus. (Navigation menus aren’t pages.)

1. Need more support for special SharePoint pages?

If you need any additional support in LinkFixer Advanced for special SharePoint pages (or other special targets), please let LinkTek Support know at 727-442-1822 or Support@LinkTek.com. Your feedback really helps us prioritize new feature development!

1. Relative vs. Absolute Links in SharePoint

We think you’ll be able to get more benefit out of LinkFixer Advanced if you understand how SharePoint treats certain links when you’re using SharePoint directly — not through LinkFixer Advanced. That’s what this section is about.

Tip: SharePoint likes links in special SharePoint pages to be relative if they point someplace on that SharePoint site or under the SharePoint root site.

Generally speaking, when a link in SharePoint points to someplace outside of SharePoint (for example, https://microsoft.com), SharePoint will let you define that link whether it works or is broken. It’s pointing outside SharePoint, so SharePoint isn’t particular about whether it works or not.

But if you try to store a link in SharePoint (on a page, for example) that points to something inside that SharePoint site or inside another site under the same root site, SharePoint will generally:

• Only save the link if it is working (not broken). It will quietly not save the link if it’s broken, so be careful to ensure your SharePoint links work.
• Force the link to be relative, even if you entered an absolute link. So if you enter, say, “https://mycompanysite.sharepoint.com/sites/SomeSite.aspx” into SharePoint’s link editor just about anywhere in mycompanysite.sharepoint.com, SharePoint is very likely going to change that absolute link to be relative to the site root, as in “/sites/SomeSite.aspx”. And SharePoint probably isn’t going to tell you it did this.

As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to leave relative links relative when processing links stored on special SharePoint pages. They’re relative because SharePoint prefers them that way.

The things above apply to links SharePoint has control over because you entered them on a SharePoint page or some other SharePoint resource. Inside your documents stored in SharePoint, you needn’t worry about the above.

Note: By definition, a relative link has to point to the site you’re on. That’s what a relative link is — its location is relative to the location the link is called from (sometimes) or relative to something else (like the SharePoint root site).

So there’s no such thing as a relative link on a SharePoint page that points off-site.

And, by definition, a URL is always an absolute link.

1. Site Pages

Every SharePoint site page is represented in SharePoint by a .aspx file, but that file doesn’t actually contain all the content of the site page.

Site pages can be parent files and child files.

Site pages can contain text, links, web parts, and other things.

LinkFixer Advanced’s Scan Only, Reports, and Modify Links processes support links on SharePoint site pages. Its other processes do not support site pages.

1. Wiki Pages

Every SharePoint wiki page is represented in SharePoint by a .aspx file, but that file doesn’t actually contain all the content of the wiki page.

Wiki pages can be parent files and child files.

Wiki pages can contain text, links, web parts, and other things.

LinkFixer Advanced’s Scan Only, Reports, and Modify Links processes support links on SharePoint wiki pages. Its other processes do not support wiki pages.

Note: Due to a limitation in SharePoint itself, LFA does not support web parts located on wiki pages. This is also mentioned in a table earlier in this chapter.

1. Links in Wiki Pages

SharePoint wiki pages are SharePoint’s take on wiki pages, so they’re basically a blank canvas which can contain links, formatted text, and other things.

LinkFixer Advanced handles links in SharePoint wiki pages similarly to how it would handle links in a Word document or an HTML file — which is to say that LinkFixer Advanced handles links in wiki pages extremely well.

1. Web Part Pages

Every SharePoint web part page is represented in SharePoint by a .aspx file, but that file doesn’t actually contain all the content of the web part page.

Web part pages can be parent files and child files.

Web part pages are very rigid — they only contain web parts.

LinkFixer Advanced’s Scan Only and Reports processes support links to web parts located on SharePoint web part pages. Its other processes do not support web part pages.

1. Web Parts Located on Web Part Pages

There’s a table at the beginning of this chapter about this. You should definitely go read that if you haven’t already. Since web parts are the only things that can be stored in web part pages, we’re going to talk a tiny bit more about web parts right here.

If you process a web part page, LinkFixer Advanced’s detailed .csv report will contain a row for each web part on that web part page. Processing a web part page will not create a row in the report for every document inside those web parts. Those documents are not actually contained in the web part page — the web parts themselves are included in the web part page and the contents of the web parts remain stored wherever they were originally were.

1. 1. Troubleshooting

• Content Type Errors in SharePoint

We’ve seen the occasional bug in SharePoint itself (completely unrelated to LinkFixer Advanced) where, for example, someone creates a web part page but SharePoint identifies it as a wiki page in the page’s Content Type property. It is also possible for a user set this wrong manually.

If you encounter this issue (wrong Content Type value), you’ll need to fix this manually by going to the properties of the page, clicking on the “Content Type” field, and picking the correct content type from the pull-down.

Why does this matter to LinkFixer Advanced users? Because LinkFixer Advanced processes links in special SharePoint pages differently depending on the type of page each one is. So, for example, if a wiki page has a Content Type of “Web Part Page”, we will only expect that page to contain web parts because web part pages only contain web parts. In that example case we will most likely not find the links which are actually contained on that wiki page because it is identified in SharePoint as a web part page.

1. Need more support for special SharePoint pages?

If you need any additional support in LinkFixer Advanced for special SharePoint pages (or other special targets), please let LinkTek Support know at 727-442-1822 or Support@LinkTek.com. Your feedback really helps us prioritize new feature development!

We know this section is in this chapter twice. That’s because we’re serious at LinkTek about capturing your feedback so we can use it to improve LinkFixer Advanced.

• — Box

1. 1. Overview

LinkFixer Advanced 6.0.1 introduces features to help you when migrating files into and out of the Box.com cloud storage system.

() Borrow from SharePoint chapter for this. Where else to borrow good stuff for?

• Important

To plan a migration into or out of Box.com, you need to know some important things about:

• How Box.com works
• How LinkFixer Advanced interacts with Box

 

• — OpenText

1. 1. Requirements

OpenText Versions: 10.0–10.5

OpenText Modules: Web Services must be installed, enabled and correctly configured.

Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012.

1. Introduction

There are two ways to move files into OpenText while preserving the integrity of the links contained in the files. The two options are to use the LinkFixer Advanced Move/Rename process, or to use the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate and Cure processes.

One option is to use the LinkFixer Advanced Move/Rename process to move the files into OpenText. This will automatically preserve the links during the migration. In many cases this is the simplest and fastest way to move files into OpenText. Moving the files and fixing the links in the files is accomplished in a single step.

If you wish to use LinkFixer Advanced to move the files into OpenText, use the procedures described in the following section and in the “Move and Rename” sections of this User’s guide.

There are other utilities for moving files into OpenText, but they will not protect and preserve your links. If you wish to use some other utility to move and rename files and folders, your second option is to use the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate process before the migration and the Cure process after the migration. Using this method, links will be temporarily broken during the migration, but will be repaired by the Cure process. The steps of the Inoculate and Cure method are outlined in one of the following sections of this Appendix.

Note: Regardless of which method you decide to use to move folders and files into OpenText, you will need to perform the first step below — connecting LinkFixer Advanced to the OpenText server.

1. Moving Files into OpenText Using LinkFixer Advanced
   1. Connecting LinkFixer Advanced to the OpenText server

In order for LinkFixer Advanced to be able “see” folders and files in OpenText, you must first provide LinkFixer Advanced with the information it needs to connect to the OpenText content server and Web Services module. Check with your IT manager to ensure that the Web Services module is installed and activated.

Important: If you have more than one OpenText server, be sure to map each OpenText site that contains files that LinkFixer Advanced will need to access.

The procedure you use to connect to OpenText server is the same regardless what operating system your computer is running. This procedure is outlined below.

1. Mapping the Network Location

If your OpenText site has not already been mapped in the LinkFixer Advanced “Network Locations” screen, do the following:

1. Launch LinkFixer Advanced (if it is not already running).
2. Select the “Network Locations” button on the ribbon menu.
3. Select {Add Open Text}.
4. Fill in the server URL, the name of the content server, and the name of the Web Services module. It is possible that the default values for Content Server and Web Services will work with your server. If not, you will need to ask your IT manager for the data.
5. Select the link format you want LinkFixer Advanced to use when it fixes links within files. The drop-down selection menu provides several of the most frequently used formats. Click {Customize} if you wish to specify a link format that is not available in the drop-down menu. The most commonly used format is selected by default. If you are uncertain, please contact your IT manager.
6. Specify the type of authentication to use.

Note: Unless your OpenText user authentication information is exactly the same as your log-in and password for the computer you are using to run LinkFixer Advanced, you will need to select “Use different credentials for authentication” and enter your OpenText credentials (user name and password).

1. Click the “Test” button to test the settings you entered above. If the connection test is successful, you will be able to use the LinkFixer Advanced “Select Parent Files” screen to select folders and files for processing. If the connection test is not successful, carefully note and correct the resulting error messages.

Important: You must successfully connect to the OpenText content server and Web Services module (“les-services”) in order for LinkFixer Advanced to be able to access and process files in OpenText. The most common connection issues occur when web services (les-services) are not installed, not correctly configured, or have been renamed to a file name other than “les-services”. Please ensure that you have “les-services” configured as a virtual directory in IIS, that you are using a 32-bit version of ASP.net, and that the version of ASP and .NET used by IIS is the same version as is used by les-services.

For further details on setting up web services, please contact OpenText support.

Enabling web services for LiveLink (version 9.7) is also possible but is somewhat more complicated. Please refer to the following OpenText technical bulletin for instructions on enabling web services for LiveLink: https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=15628200&objAction=WikiView&vernum=10

• Scanning Files

From the “Home” screen, select {Scan Only}, and step through the process of scanning all the files you intend to move to the OpenText site.

1. Move/Rename Files

From the “Home” screen, select “{Move/Rename}”.

1. Move/Rename Options

On the “Move/Rename Options” screen, ensure that the option “Automatically correct slash orientation in links” is checked. This causes LinkFixer Advanced to automatically change Windows file system backslashes to hyperlink (https://) forward slashes.

1. Move and Rename Rules

Create as many rules as necessary to specify the files you want to move into OpenText, using the “Define Rename Rule” screen as shown below.

For more details on creating rename rules, please refer to the Move/Rename section of “Chapter 6 — What Do You Want LinkFixer Advanced to Do?” of this User’s guide.

1. Preview Files to be Moved/Renamed

Review the listed files to be sure they are complete and correct.

1. Perform Move/Rename

Click the {Run} button to perform the Move/Rename function.

Then review the Move/Rename Summary report for details of the process.

1. Using Inoculate and Cure when Migrating Files into OpenText

If you choose to use a different software tool to do your migration, then you’ll need to Inoculate the files first, using the procedures described in the “Results Summary” section. Once you have successfully inoculated your files, you may use any techniques and/or software utilities you wish to move the inoculated files into the new directory structure in OpenText. Then use the procedures described in the ““ sections of this User’s guide to restore the links in the files you moved into OpenText.

Important Note: Before using Cure in OpenText, we strongly recommend that you temporarily disable the synchronization feature in OpenText Explorer or Enterprise Connect (or both). We have found that automatic synchronization of files by these utilities can cause errors during the Cure process.

To summarize, the migration to OpenText using LinkFixer Advanced’s Inoculate and Cure processes consists of these four steps:

• Connect to the OpenText, as explained and illustrated in the previous section.
• Prepare the files for the migration using the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate process.
• Move the files into OpenText by any means you choose.
• Re-link the files using the LinkFixer Advanced Cure process.

1. Versioning in OpenText

One widely used feature of OpenText is its ability to track and store successive versions of documents. LinkFixer Advanced has been designed to work with this feature of OpenText. If version control is enabled in OpenText, LinkFixer Advanced features that write changes to OpenText files (Inoculate, Cure, Move/Rename and Modify Links) will cause a new version to be created in OpenText. OpenText will create this new version of the file with the current date and time of the modification, and with the “Modified By” field populated with the name of the user who is running LinkFixer Advanced.

1. Ongoing Link Maintenance

The best solution for broken links is to keep all files within OpenText inoculated using LinkFixer Advanced. When broken links do occur, they can then be easily repaired using the LinkFixer Advanced Cure process.

• — Novell NetWare

• Migrating from Novell NetWare

LinkFixer Advanced can provide a huge benefit when migrating data out of Novell NetWare volumes. To make this process go smoothly, there are some specific steps that must be taken, and some guidelines that must be followed.

• What Will Not Work

We recommend that you not attempt to run any LinkFixer Advanced process on files located on a NetWare volume.

There is a well-known and widely-discussed issue on Novell (and other) forums that occurs when attempting to process files on NetWare volumes. The mapped drive connection between Windows and the NetWare volume spontaneously and intermittently fails. This leads LinkFixer Advanced to see the Novell location as inaccessible (because it becomes inaccessible).

The following link points to one of several related topics on the Novell forums: https://forums.novell.com/showthread.php/437666-NClient-2SP1-IR6-Drive-Mapping-Disconnects. Participants on the forums report trying various updates for NetWare, and other several other attempted solutions, without achieving any consistent success.

This, and other issues with NetWare, leads us to recommend only the following procedures when using LinkFixer Advanced with NetWare.

• What Does Work

Move (or copy) your files out of NetWare and into Windows before you process any files or links using LinkFixer Advanced.

Most links that point to child files located on the NetWare volume will be broken when the files are moved from NetWare to Windows. But, these broken links can be easily fixed, usually in a single step, using the LinkFixer Advanced Modify Links process. After the links are repaired and working in Windows, any of the other LinkFixer Advanced processes can then be used to protect, preserve, restructure or further migrate your files and links in the Windows environment.

• Specific Steps

• Move Your Files to Windows

You can use any tool you choose to move (or copy) your files from NetWare to Windows.

Make a simple, straight-across move. For example, let’s say your NetWare volume is mapped as N:\ and your Windows share is mapped as W:\ on the computer that is running LinkFixer Advanced. The simplest method would be to simply move (or copy) N:\*.* to W:\*.*.

If you have only a few simple changes that you want to apply during the migration, so that the folders in Windows have different names than they had in Novell, that’s okay too. Just be sure to make a complete list of the changes. This will allow you to make a simple set of rename rules, so that the LinkFixer Advanced Modify Links process can make the corresponding changes in the links.

• Run the Modify Links Process

After the files are all in Windows, run the LinkFixer Advanced Modify Links process on them. Create one or more Rename Rules that reflect the way (or ways) that the files were moved from NetWare to Windows. For example, you might have a rule that changes N:\Accounting\ to W:\Departments\Accounting\. In the simplest example, in the previous paragraph above, you might only need one rename rule that changes every link containing N:\ to W:\. Or, if your links in NetWare were formatted as UNC paths, your rename rule might contain instructions to change every instance of \\NetWareVolume\Folder to \\WindowsServer\Share.

The end result of the Modify Links process will be that the links that were previously working in NetWare will again be working in Windows.

• Run Other LinkFixer Advanced Processes, as Needed

After the Modify Links process has fixed the links that were broken by the move from NetWare to Windows, any of the other LinkFixer Advanced processes can be used on the files and links. For example, if your migration includes extensive restructuring of your folder structure, you can use the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate process to prepare the links before restructuring the folders, and the Cure process to fix the links after the files are in their eventual final location. In this case, you would use the following sequence of steps:

• Move the files from NetWare to Windows.
• Use the Modify Links process to get the links working again in Windows.
• Inoculate the working links in Windows.
• Restructure your folders and files to any desired configuration.
• Cure the links in the parent file in their new locations.

• Summary

The process of migrating files from NetWare to Windows using LinkFixer Advanced involves only one additional step — the use of the Modify Links process on the files after they have been moved to Windows. (You will need to move or copy the files from NetWare to Windows at some point anyway, so that doesn’t count as an additional step.) After the files are in the Windows environment, and the links have been restored to working order by the Modify Links process, the files can then be restructured, renamed, moved into SharePoint or OpenText, or added to a distributed file system (DFS). The steps and processes for performing any further changes to the file structure or the links are described elsewhere in this User’s guide.

By following the simple steps given above, LinkFixer Advanced can preserve your links when you migrate files out of NetWare.

() Write a new chapter. The old one is in the backup clone doc.

 

• — Password-Protected Files

1. 1. Supported File Types

LinkFixer Advanced 5.5 added the ability to process password-protected versions of the following file types:

• Microsoft Excel (.xlsx, .xls)
• Microsoft Word (.docx, .doc)

1. Password Support Basics

When LinkFixer Advanced encounters a password-protected Excel or Word parent file, it will try every password in your provided password list file until it successfully opens that parent file or runs out of passwords to try.

LinkFixer Advanced will skip password-protected parent files which it does not have the password for.

To speed up future runs, LinkFixer Advanced will save successful passwords (always in an encrypted form) in your LinkFixer Advanced database along with the file (path or URL) which that password successfully opened. Your passwords will never be stored in the clear and your passwords will never be automatically transmitted to a third party. They remain encrypted and exclusively in your control.

Your files will remain password-protected after LinkFixer Advanced processes them. The password is not permanently removed.

1. Creating A Password List File

For LinkFixer Advanced to process your password-protected Excel and Word files, you need to provide it with a text file or Excel spreadsheet containing a list of your passwords. You would create this password list file manually — LinkFixer Advanced has no way to create it for you as it does not know what your passwords are.

The internal format of your password list file must be:

• Text files: Put one password on each line.
• Excel spreadsheets: Put one password on each row in column A.

Excel Password List Spreadsheet Tip: Column B and later columns in your password list spreadsheet are not for passwords. Use those (optionally) for naming the file that each password applies to, which can speed up processing. More on this later in this chapter.

1. Using Your Password List File

Once you have manually created your password list file, you provide it to LinkFixer Advanced by going to Settings | Files | Password-Protected Files and turning on the checkbox for the password-protected files feature. Then you browse to the password list file you manually created.

1. Protecting Your Password List File

You can also password-protect the password list file itself. To do this, you must use an Excel spreadsheet (not a text file) as the password list file and you must put a password on that spreadsheet.

To password-protect your password list spreadsheet, open it in Excel and choose File | Info | {Protect Workbook} | Encrypt with Password and supply the password. When you select that password list spreadsheet in LinkFixer Advanced, we will prompt you for the password. This password will be saved in your LinkFixer Advanced settings file in an encrypted form.

Be sure to save your password list spreadsheet’s password someplace safe so you can edit your password list spreadsheet in the future.

1. Inside Your Password List File

Here’s where the passwords go in your password list file:

• If you use a plain text file, just enter one password per line. This is the simplest approach, but you will not be able to password-protect your password list file.
• If you use an Excel spreadsheet, put the passwords in column A, one password per row.

1. Password Processing Speed

Checking multiple passwords on each of your supported password-protected files will add time to your LinkFixer Advanced processing runs. LinkFixer Advanced does a number of things behind the scenes to maximize performance. But one thing you can do to speed up password checking is to put password/filename pairs in your password list spreadsheet. This way LinkFixer Advanced doesn’t have to try multiple passwords for each password-protected file it encounters — you’ve already told it which password goes with which file.

To do this, you need to make your password list an Excel spreadsheet, not a text file. Then simply put the password in column A and the file path (location and file name) in column B. You can put an additional file path in Column C, another in Column D, etc. Column B and later columns can include wildcards. An empty column B is the same as “*.*” — that row’s password would be used to try to open any password-protected file in any location.

Here are some examples. The first column in the table below contains made-up but descriptive passwords. The second column contains some examples of file paths and file path wildcards to get you started.

Column A (Password)	Column B or C, etc. (File Name or Full Path)	Result
Password1	*.xlsx	This password will be tried on any password-protected .xlsx files LinkFixer Advanced encounters. This password will not be tried on files with other filenames (extensions).
Password2	X:\Projects\Archive\*.*	This password will be tried on any password-protected Excel or Word files LinkFixer Advanced encounters in the folder “X:\Projects\Archive\”. This password will not be tried on files in other locations.
Password3	X:\Finance\Secret File.xls	This password will be tried only on the single file “X:\Finance\Secret File.xls”. It will not be tried on any other files and it will not be tried on this file (or a file with the same name) found in a different location.
Password4	<Some URL>†	†For help using this password limitation feature on URLs rather than files on a local office network, please call LinkTek Support at 727-442-1822 or email Support@LinkTek.com.  We have considerable unpublished support in this area already, but we want to understand our users’ exact needs before we consider our functionality complete in this area and document it for broad use.

1. Some Technical Details
   1. Duplicate Passwords

When providing passwords with no corresponding file path (passwords which could be tried against any parent file), don’t worry about duplicate passwords. We automatically ignore duplicate passwords when reading the password list file.

We also take into account the Column B (and later column) file names and file paths when considering whether a password entry in your password list file is truly a duplicate.

1. Need More Password-Protected File Support?

If you need LinkFixer Advanced to support password-protected versions of any additional file types, please let LinkTek Support know at 727-442-1822 or Support@LinkTek.com. Your feedback really helps us prioritize new feature development!

• — Adobe InDesign Files (.indd)

1. 1. Visit Our Knowledge Base

There’s a lot to know about using LinkFixer Advanced with Adobe InDesign files. To read about this, please visit our self-help knowledge base.

Here are some direct links to help you get a fast start:

• Our overall InDesign knowledge base page (including system requirements)
• A knowledge base search for the word “indesign” so you can browse multiple articles on that topic

1. Requirements — Adobe InDesign

In order to support InDesign (.indd) files, LinkFixer Advanced requires Adobe InDesign to be installed and activated (licensed) on the computer running LinkFixer Advanced.

1. Which InDesign version do you need?

New releases of InDesign can handle files created with earlier versions of InDesign.

For the purposes of your LinkFixer Advanced processing, you can install any version of InDesign as long as the .indd files you will process were created and last modified with that version or an earlier version.

Very Important: If you need to keep your .indd files in a specific InDesign version format, please use that version of InDesign during your LinkFixer Advanced processing.

• — Glossary

1. Agent

A specific LinkFixer Advanced process running as part of a LinkFixer Advanced processing job. Agents read and write the the parent and child files. Agents communicate with the Controller process.

Agents are part of how LinkFixer Advanced is able to process files at incredible speed. Agents are also part of LinkFixer Advanced’s fault tolerance system.

1. Basename

The “basename” is the part of a filename that comes after the folder and before the extension. For example, in “C:\Work\Myfile.txt”, the basename is “Myfile”.

1. Checksum

A checksum is a computed value based on the contents of a file. LinkFixer Advanced uses checksums to uniquely identify child files during the Inoculate and Cure processes.

1. Child File

A file that is pointed to by links in one or more parent files

1. Controller

A specific process running on a computer during a LinkFixer Advanced processing job that controls Agent processes and balances their workloads.

1. Cure

Once your files have been inoculated, use the Cure process to fix broken links automatically in supported parent files.

1. Extension

The extension is the part of the filename that comes after the basename. Under Windows, extensions are often (but don’t have to be) three characters long.

Always pay attention to whether the extension includes the period preceding it. This can vary depending on what you are doing.

1. Factory Defaults

Factory defaults are the default program settings that come with LinkFixer Advanced. These factory default settings are loaded the very first-time LinkFixer Advanced is run. Additionally, you can restore these default settings at any time.

1. Filename

The part of a file specification that comes after the drive and folder. It includes the extension. For example, in “C:\Work\Myfile.txt”, the filename is “Myfile.txt”.

1. Inoculate

LinkFixer Advanced’s Inoculate process safeguards parent files, links, and child files so that if files are moved or renamed, the Cure process can be run to automatically repair any broken links. Parent and child files that have been safeguarded with the Inoculate process are said to be “inoculated”.

Note: You would use the Inoculate process to safeguard healthy links contained in your documents.

1. Link (noun)

A link is defined as the information contained in a parent file that points to a child file. A link minimally contains the file name of a child file, and it often contains the drive and folder where a child file is located.

1. Link ID

A number generated by LinkFixer Advanced that uniquely identifies a child file that is pointed to by a link in a parent file.

1. Missing

A child file is considered missing if it does not exist or if it cannot be found. Most applications look for child files in the same folder as the parent file or in another default location. If a child file cannot be found, it is missing. The link to this missing child file is then referred to as a “broken link”.

1. Parent File

This is a file that contains links pointing to one or more child files. For example, if a Word file points to a GIF file, the Word file is the parent file and the GIF file is the child file.

1. Regular Expression

Regular expressions are a powerful text pattern matching language. Using regular expressions, you can pick a text string apart into as many pieces as you want, then reassemble them in any order you want, while adding any new pieces you need to add to it.

• — Regular Expressions

1. 1. Introduction to Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are a powerful tool for finding and replacing text strings that have similar characteristics. Using regular expressions, you can pick a text string apart into as many pieces as you want, then reassemble them in any order you want, while adding any new pieces you need in the process.

A regular expression is made up of special characters and literals.

A “special character” is defined as “a single character that has special meaning when used in a regular expression.” The period (“.”) is a special character.

A “literal” is defined as “anything that is not a special character.” The letter ‘A’ would be a literal.

The verb “to match” is used extensively in this chapter. It means, “to accept as equivalent to”.

1. Special Characters

Special characters are single characters that have special meaning when used in a regular expression.

1. Period

A period (“.”) matches any character except for the new line character (\n). Thus “a..” matches “act”, “art”, “ash”, “arc”, “ate” and so on .

1. Asterisk

An asterisk (“*”) matches any number of repetitions of the immediately preceding character or pattern, including zero repetitions. For example, “tel*” matches “tel” followed by any number of l’s or no l’s. Thus, it would find matches within the strings “the tel. number”, “to tell the truth” and “answer the telephone”.

1. Backslash

A backslash (“\”) reverses the “special” meaning of a character. For example, “\.” matches a period, “\*” matches an asterisk, and “\\” matches a backslash. There are some cases where the backslash changes the meaning of a character from literal to special. These cases are defined later. If used before a character that is not a special character, or that would have no meaning as a special character, the backslash is simply ignored.

1. Caret

A caret (“^”) matches the beginning of a string. “^Once upon a time” will find a match within “Once upon a time there were three bears”, but not within “The story began once upon a time.”

With a single exception, if the caret occurs anywhere except the beginning of a regular expression, it is interpreted as a literal. (The single exception to this is defined later.)

To match a line starting with a caret sign, you must specify a “special character” caret followed by a “literal” carat. Thus “^\^.” would match the first two characters of any string whose first character was a caret.

1. Dollar Sign

A dollar sign (“$”) matches the end of a string. “the end$” will find a match within “He reached the end”, but not within “He reached the end of the road.” Note that it would not find a match within “He reached the end.” because of the period at the end of the string.

If a dollar sign occurs anywhere but at the end of a regular expression, it is interpreted as a literal character. Thus “$100” will only match “$100”, treating the dollar sign as a literal.

To match a string ending with a dollar sign, you must specify a “literal” dollar sign, followed by a “special character” dollar sign. “.\$$” would match the last two characters of any string whose last character was a dollar sign.

1. Brackets

Brackets (“[“ and “]”) are used to delimit a “set” of characters, any one of which may match a single character in the search string. Thus, “[Aa]” will match any occurrence of the letter “a”, either upper or lower case, and “[0123456789]” will match any single digit.

When the caret is used as the first character after a left square bracket, it reverses the meaning of the search. “[^0123456789]” will match any character except a digit. And “^[^0123456789]” will match the first character of a string as long as it is not a number. Note that in this case, the caret is used with both its special meanings.

1. Hyphens

The hyphen (“-”) has special meaning when used within brackets. It indicates a range of characters and must have a character on each side of it to be valid. “[A-Z]” will match any upper case letter), “[a-z]” will match any lower case letter, or “[0-9]” will match any digit. “[a-zA-Z]” will match any letter, either upper or lower case.

When found outside of brackets, the hyphen is interpreted as a literal character.

To include the hyphen in a set of characters to search for, precede it by a backslash. Thus “[+\–]” matches either a plus or minus sign, whereas “[+–]” would be an invalid regular expression.

1. Repetitions

The repetition codes are used to allow the same pattern to be matched multiple times. The symbols used are “{“ and “}”.

The strict technical definition of a regular expression pattern is “a sequence of one or more special characters and/or literals that will match zero or more repetitions of a single character or set of characters”. Now that’s quite a mouthful, so it’s easiest to think of it as from the other direction. Essentially it is “a matched string of characters.”

The formats are:

“p{x}” matches exactly x repetitions of pattern p.

“p{x, }” matches at least x repetitions of pattern p.

“p{x,y}” matches any number of repetitions of pattern p, from x to y, inclusive.

x and y must be non-negative integers less than 256.

Whenever a choice exists, as many occurrences of the pattern as possible will be matched.

Probably the most common usage of the repetition codes is in matching numbers, as in “[0-9]{1,}”, which will match “1”, “33” and “23496187” alike.

1. Regular Expression Substitution Example

This is a very simple, straight substitution. This same thing can be done using Wildcard Substitution.

Search string: “Ave\.”
Replacement string: “Avenue”
Search string: “123 4th Ave.”
Result string: “123 4th Avenue”

The use of “\.” indicates that the period should be taken literally, as opposed to matching any single character. Without the backslash, (as “Ave. “) it would match “Ave Maria” and change it to “AvenueMaria.” (Note that the space between “Ave” and “Maria” is matched by the period and is therefore replaced along with the “Ave.”)

1. Segments

One of the more powerful aspects of using regular expressions is the ability to record sections of an input string that matched particular sections of the regular expression.

The regular expression format is extended through the use of “segments” via the “(“ and “)” operators which may be placed around any section of the regular expression.

( Denotes the beginning of a segment.

) Denotes the end of a segment.

There can be multiple segments per regular expression. They can be referenced later as numbered strings as “$#” or $1, $2, $3 etc.

Use of the caret (^) and dollar sign ($) primitives to match line beginnings and endings respectively must occur outside of any segments. The following expression will treat both the caret and dollar sign as literal characters:

“(^This expression$)” and will not match the string “This expression”, but will match “^This expression$”.

The following will treat both the caret and dollar sign as the line terminators:

“^(This expression)$” and will match the string “This expression”, but not “Is This expression correct?”

1. Examples

Given a filename of “C:\Folder\File.gif”, the regular expression search string of “(.*\).gif” and the replacement string of “$1.jpg”, the resulting filename would be “C:\Folder\File.jpg”. The #1 segment, indicated by “$1” in the replacement string, is all the text before “.gif”.

Given the input text of “I like cats. I love dogs.”, the regular expression string of “(.*)cats\. (.*)dogs\.” and the replacement string of “$2fish. $1mice.”, the output would be “I love fish. I like mice.” The #1 segment being all the text that comes before “cats” and the #2 segment all the text that comes after “cats.” and before “dogs.”. These two segments are reversed in order in the output string and merged with “fish” and “mice”.

1. Tips and Tricks

The wildcard character “*” can hand out some surprises if one isn’t careful. The two things to remember are: 1) it does not work alone — it always applies to the character or pattern immediately preceding it, and 2) it will match regardless of whether the preceding pattern exists. This is the only code that will actually match the absence of something.

Likewise the “[“ and “]” codes can be tricky. The thing to remember is that the entire pattern, from the opening through the closing brackets, represents just one character.

Combine those two tips, “[ ]*” (with a space between the brackets) is a useful construct when you’re not sure if there will be a space between two characters in a string, such as “100ft” and “100 ft”. You can also think of this as matching “zero or more spaces”.

1. Numbers

Matching numbers can be frustrating because of the great variation in formats. So here are some examples of some common formats:

“[0-9]{1,}” — match whole numbers

This will match any contiguous sequence of digits.

“[0-9][0-9,]{3,}” — match whole numbers greater than 1,000, with or without comma separators

This will match “1,000”, “1000” and “999,999,999,999”
It will not match “10”, “999.” or “100”

“[0-9][0-9,]{1,}\.[0-9]{1,}” — match only numbers having decimal fractions, with or without comma separators

This will match “10.0”, “100.001” and “1,234.567”
It will not match “123”, “123.” or “.001”

“[0-9]{1,}[ ][0-9]{1,}/[0-9]{1,}” — match only mixed numbers, without comma separators

This will match “3 1/2”, “8 7/16” and “2271 17/22”
It will not match “1,000 1/2” or “3/4”

“[0-9]{1,}˚[ ]*[0-9]{1,}΄[ ]*[0-9]{1,}˝” — match degree/minute/second bearings

This will match “10˚ 17΄ 33˝” (with spaces) and “10˚17΄33˝” (without spaces)
It will not match “10˚ 17΄” or “17΄ 33˝”.

“[\+\-][0-9]{1,}” — match only whole numbers, without comma separators, that are directly preceded by a plus or minus sign

This will match “-1”, “+1000” and “-100000”
It will not match “-1,000” or “1000”

“[xX]*[0-9A-Fa-f]{2,}” — match hexadecimal numbers of two or more digits optionally preceded by an upper or lower case “X.”

This will match “xF0”, “x00ff”, “8010”, “abc” and “0123456789aBcDeF”
It will not match “F”, “0” or “xyz”

Although might seem tempting to use “[0-9,]{1,}” to match comma separated numbers, it is actually not of much use because it will match any comma, plus other things that are not valid numbers:

“ , “
“1,2,3,4,5”
“101,,,101,,,101,,,”
“,,,,,,,,,,”
“,1”

Note: Using Regex can be challenging without the assistance of a syntax simulator.

It is recommended that you test your rules first using one.

• — Third-Party Licenses

• ExcelDataReader License

LinkFixer Advanced uses the ExcelDataReader library for reading file exclusion lists in Excel spreadsheet format. The ExcelDataReader library uses the MIT License. The following license applies specifically and only to the ExcelDataReader library. All other parts of LinkFixer Advanced are licensed according to the terms of the LinkTek End User Software License Agreement.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014 ExcelDataReader

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

• AlphaFS License

LinkFixer Advanced uses the AlphaFS .NET library to enable handling of long file paths. The AlphaFS library uses the MIT License. The following license applies specifically and only to the AlphaFS library. All other parts of LinkFixer Advanced are licensed according to the terms of the LinkTek End User Software License Agreement.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2008-2012 Peter Palotas, Alexandr Normuradov

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

1. Microsoft Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework
   1. MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS

These license terms are an agreement between Microsoft Corporation (or based on where you live, one of its affiliates) and you. Please read them. They apply to the software named above, which includes the media on which you received it, if any. The terms also apply to any Microsoft

• updates,
• supplements,
• Internet-based services, and
• support services

for this software, unless other terms accompany those items. If so, those terms apply.

BY USING THE SOFTWARE, YOU ACCEPT THESE TERMS. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THEM, DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE.

If you comply with these license terms, you have the rights below.

1. 1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS.

• You may use any number of copies of the software to design, develop and test your programs that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system.
• This agreement gives you rights to the software only. Any rights to a Microsoft Windows operating system (such as testing pre-release versions of Windows in a live operating environment) are provided separately by the license terms for Windows.

1. 2. ADDITIONAL LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND/OR USE RIGHTS.

Distributable Code. You may modify, copy, and distribute the software, in source or compiled form, to run on a Microsoft Windows operating system.

1. Distribution Requirements. If you distribute the software, you must

• require distributors and external end users to agree to terms that protect it at least as much as this agreement;
• if you modify the software and distribute such modified files, include prominent notices in such modified files so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original software;
• display your valid copyright notice on your programs; and
• indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Microsoft from any claims, including attorneys’ fees, related to the distribution or use of your programs or to your modifications to the software.

1. Distribution Restrictions. You may not

• alter any copyright, trademark or patent notice in the software;
• use Microsoft’s trademarks in your programs’ names or in a way that suggests your programs come from or are endorsed by Microsoft;
• include the software in malicious, deceptive or unlawful programs; or
• modify or distribute the source code of the software so that any part of it becomes subject to an Excluded License. An Excluded License is one that requires, as a condition of use, modification or distribution, that
• the code be disclosed or distributed in source code form; or
• others have the right to modify it.

1. 3. SCOPE OF LICENSE.

1. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement.

1. 4. EXPORT RESTRICTIONS.

1. The software is subject to United States export laws and regulations. You must comply with all domestic and international export laws and regulations that apply to the software. These laws include restrictions on destinations, end users and end use. For additional information, see <https://www.microsoft.com/exporting>.

1. 5. SUPPORT SERVICES.

Because this software is “as is,” we may not provide support services for it.

1. 6. ENTIRE AGREEMENT.

This agreement, and the terms for supplements, updates, Internet-based services and support services that you use, are the entire agreement for the software and support services.

1. 7. APPLICABLE LAW

1. United States. If you acquired the software in the United States, Washington state law governs the interpretation of this agreement and applies to claims for breach of it, regardless of conflict of laws principles. The laws of the state where you live govern all other claims, including claims under state consumer protection laws, unfair competition laws, and in tort.
2. Outside the United States. If you acquired the software in any other country, the laws of that country apply.

1. 8. LEGAL EFFECT.

This agreement describes certain legal rights. You may have other rights under the laws of your country. You may also have rights with respect to the party from whom you acquired the software. This agreement does not change your rights under the laws of your country if the laws of your country do not permit it to do so.

1. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY.

THE SOFTWARE IS LICENSED “AS-IS.” YOU BEAR THE RISK OF USING IT. MICROSOFT GIVES NO EXPRESS WARRANTIES, GUARANTEES OR CONDITIONS. YOU MAY HAVE ADDITIONAL CONSUMER RIGHTS UNDER YOUR LOCAL LAWS WHICH THIS AGREEMENT CANNOT CHANGE. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER YOUR LOCAL LAWS, MICROSOFT EXCLUDES THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

1. LIMITATION ON AND EXCLUSION OF REMEDIES AND DAMAGES.

YOU CAN RECOVER FROM MICROSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS ONLY DIRECT DAMAGES UP TO U.S. $5.00. YOU CANNOT RECOVER ANY OTHER DAMAGES, INCLUDING CONSEQUENTIAL, LOST PROFITS, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES.

This limitation applies to

• anything related to the software, services, content (including code) on third party Internet sites, or third party programs; and
• claims for breach of contract, breach of warranty, guarantee or condition, strict liability, negligence, or other tort to the extent permitted by applicable law.

It also applies even if Microsoft knew or should have known about the possibility of the damages. The above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you because your country may not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental, consequential or other damages.

Please note: As this software is distributed in Quebec, Canada, some of the clauses in this agreement are provided below in French.

Remarque : Ce logiciel étant distribué au Québec, Canada, certaines des clauses dans ce contrat sont fournies ci-dessous en français.

1. EXONÉRATION DE GARANTIE.

Le logiciel visé par une licence est offert « tel quel ». Toute utilisation de ce logiciel est à votre seule risque et péril. Microsoft n’accorde aucune autre garantie expresse. Vous pouvez bénéficier de droits additionnels en vertu du droit local sur la protection des consommateurs, que ce contrat ne peut modifier. La ou elles sont permises par le droit locale, les garanties implicites de qualité marchande, d’adéquation à un usage particulier et d’absence de contrefaçon sont exclues.

1. LIMITATION DES DOMMAGES-INTÉRÊTS ET EXCLUSION DE RESPONSABILITÉ POUR LES DOMMAGES.

Vous pouvez obtenir de Microsoft et de ses fournisseurs une indemnisation en cas de dommages directs uniquement à hauteur de 5,00 $ US. Vous ne pouvez prétendre à aucune indemnisation pour les autres dommages, y compris les dommages spéciaux, indirects ou accessoires et pertes de bénéfices.

Cette limitation concerne :

• tout ce qui est relié au logiciel, aux services ou au contenu (y compris le code) figurant sur des sites Internet tiers ou dans des programmes tiers ; et
• les réclamations au titre de violation de contrat ou de garantie, ou au titre de responsabilité stricte, de négligence ou d’une autre faute dans la limite autorisée par la loi en vigueur.

Elle s’applique également, même si Microsoft connaissait ou devrait connaître l’éventualité d’un tel dommage. Si votre pays n’autorise pas l’exclusion ou la limitation de responsabilité pour les dommages indirects, accessoires ou de quelque nature que ce soit, il se peut que la limitation ou l’exclusion ci-dessus ne s’appliquera pas à votre égard.

1. EFFET JURIDIQUE.

Le présent contrat décrit certains droits juridiques. Vous pourriez avoir d’autres droits prévus par les lois de votre pays. Le présent contrat ne modifie pas les droits que vous confèrent les lois de votre pays si celles-ci ne le permettent pas.

1. OpenMCDF Library

LinkFixer Advanced uses the OpenMCDF library to access structured storage files. You can download the OpenMCDF library in source code form from:

https://github.com/ironfede/openmcdf

The following license applies specifically and only to the OpenMCDF library. All other parts of LinkFixer Advanced are licensed according to the terms of the LinkTek End User Software License Agreement.

 

1. Mozilla Public License

Version 2.0

1. 1. Definitions
   1. 1.1. “Contributor”

means each individual or legal entity that creates, contributes to the creation of, or owns Covered Software.

1. 1.2. “Contributor Version”

means the combination of the Contributions of others (if any) used by a Contributor and that particular Contributor’s Contribution.

1. 1.3. “Contribution”

means Covered Software of a particular Contributor.

1. 1.4. “Covered Software”

means Source Code Form to which the initial Contributor has attached the notice in Exhibit A, the Executable Form of such Source Code Form, and Modifications of such Source Code Form, in each case including portions thereof.

1. 1.5. “Incompatible With Secondary Licenses”

means that the initial Contributor has attached the notice described in Exhibit B to the Covered Software; or

that the Covered Software was made available under the terms of version 1.1 or earlier of the License, but not also under the terms of a Secondary License.

1. 1.6. “Executable Form”

means any form of the work other than Source Code Form.

1. 1.7. “Larger Work”

means a work that combines Covered Software with other material, in a separate file or files, that is not Covered Software.

1. 1.8. “License”

means this document.

1. 1.9. “Licensable”

means having the right to grant, to the maximum extent possible, whether at the time of the initial grant or subsequently, any and all of the rights conveyed by this License.

1. 1.10. “Modifications”

means any of the following:

any file in Source Code Form that results from an addition to, deletion from, or modification of the contents of Covered Software; or

any new file in Source Code Form that contains any Covered Software.

1. 1.11. “Patent Claims” of a Contributor

means any patent claim(s), including without limitation, method, process, and apparatus claims, in any patent Licensable by such Contributor that would be infringed, but for the grant of the License, by the making, using, selling, offering for sale, having made, import, or transfer of either its Contributions or its Contributor Version.

1. 1.12. “Secondary License”

means either the GNU General Public License, Version 2.0, the GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 2.1, the GNU Affero General Public License, Version 3.0, or any later versions of those licenses.

1. 1.13. “Source Code Form”

means the form of the work preferred for making modifications.

1. 1.14. “You” (or “Your”)

means an individual or a legal entity exercising rights under this License. For legal entities, “You” includes any entity that controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with You. For purposes of this definition, “control” means (a) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (b) ownership of more than fifty percent (50%) of the outstanding shares or beneficial ownership of such entity.

1. 2. License Grants and Conditions
   1. 2.1. Grants

Each Contributor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license:

under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by such Contributor to use, reproduce, make available, modify, display, perform, distribute, and otherwise exploit its Contributions, either on an unmodified basis, with Modifications, or as part of a Larger Work; and

under Patent Claims of such Contributor to make, use, sell, offer for sale, have made, import, and otherwise transfer either its Contributions or its Contributor Version.

1. 2.2. Effective Date

The licenses granted in Section 2.1 with respect to any Contribution become effective for each Contribution on the date the Contributor first distributes such Contribution.

1. 2.3. Limitations on Grant Scope

The licenses granted in this Section 2 are the only rights granted under this License. No additional rights or licenses will be implied from the distribution or licensing of Covered Software under this License. Notwithstanding Section 2.1(b) above, no patent license is granted by a Contributor:

for any code that a Contributor has removed from Covered Software; or

for infringements caused by: (i) Your and any other third party’s modifications of Covered Software, or (ii) the combination of its Contributions with other software (except as part of its Contributor Version); or

under Patent Claims infringed by Covered Software in the absence of its Contributions.

This License does not grant any rights in the trademarks, service marks, or logos of any Contributor (except as may be necessary to comply with the notice requirements in Section 3.4).

1. 2.4. Subsequent Licenses

No Contributor makes additional grants as a result of Your choice to distribute the Covered Software under a subsequent version of this License (see Section 10.2) or under the terms of a Secondary License (if permitted under the terms of Section 3.3).

1. 2.5. Representation

Each Contributor represents that the Contributor believes its Contributions are its original creation(s) or it has sufficient rights to grant the rights to its Contributions conveyed by this License.

1. 2.6. Fair Use

This License is not intended to limit any rights You have under applicable copyright doctrines of fair use, fair dealing, or other equivalents.

1. 2.7. Conditions

Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 are conditions of the licenses granted in Section 2.1.

1. 3. Responsibilities
   1. 3.1. Distribution of Source Form

All distribution of Covered Software in Source Code Form, including any Modifications that You create or to which You contribute, must be under the terms of this License. You must inform recipients that the Source Code Form of the Covered Software is governed by the terms of this License, and how they can obtain a copy of this License. You may not attempt to alter or restrict the recipients’ rights in the Source Code Form.

1. 3.2. Distribution of Executable Form

If You distribute Covered Software in Executable Form then:

such Covered Software must also be made available in Source Code Form, as described in Section 3.1, and You must inform recipients of the Executable Form how they can obtain a copy of such Source Code Form by reasonable means in a timely manner, at a charge no more than the cost of distribution to the recipient; and

You may distribute such Executable Form under the terms of this License, or sublicense it under different terms, provided that the license for the Executable Form does not attempt to limit or alter the recipients’ rights in the Source Code Form under this License.

1. 3.3. Distribution of a Larger Work

You may create and distribute a Larger Work under terms of Your choice, provided that You also comply with the requirements of this License for the Covered Software. If the Larger Work is a combination of Covered Software with a work governed by one or more Secondary Licenses, and the Covered Software is not Incompatible With Secondary Licenses, this License permits You to additionally distribute such Covered Software under the terms of such Secondary License(s), so that the recipient of the Larger Work may, at their option, further distribute the Covered Software under the terms of either this License or such Secondary License(s).

1. 3.4. Notices

You may not remove or alter the substance of any license notices (including copyright notices, patent notices, disclaimers of warranty, or limitations of liability) contained within the Source Code Form of the Covered Software, except that You may alter any license notices to the extent required to remedy known factual inaccuracies.

1. 3.5. Application of Additional Terms

You may choose to offer, and to charge a fee for, warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligations to one or more recipients of Covered Software. However, You may do so only on Your own behalf, and not on behalf of any Contributor. You must make it absolutely clear that any such warranty, support, indemnity, or liability obligation is offered by You alone, and You hereby agree to indemnify every Contributor for any liability incurred by such Contributor as a result of warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You offer. You may include additional disclaimers of warranty and limitations of liability specific to any jurisdiction.

1. 4. Inability to Comply Due to Statute or Regulation

If it is impossible for You to comply with any of the terms of this License with respect to some or all of the Covered Software due to statute, judicial order, or regulation then You must: (a) comply with the terms of this License to the maximum extent possible; and (b) describe the limitations and the code they affect. Such description must be placed in a text file included with all distributions of the Covered Software under this License. Except to the extent prohibited by statute or regulation, such description must be sufficiently detailed for a recipient of ordinary skill to be able to understand it.

1. 5. Termination

5.1. The rights granted under this License will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with any of its terms. However, if You become compliant, then the rights granted under this License from a particular Contributor are reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until such Contributor explicitly and finally terminates Your grants, and (b) on an ongoing basis, if such Contributor fails to notify You of the non-compliance by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after You have come back into compliance. Moreover, Your grants from a particular Contributor are reinstated on an ongoing basis if such Contributor notifies You of the non-compliance by some reasonable means, this is the first time You have received notice of non-compliance with this License from such Contributor, and You become compliant prior to 30 days after Your receipt of the notice.

5.2. If You initiate litigation against any entity by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declaratory judgment actions, counter-claims, and cross-claims) alleging that a Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then the rights granted to You by any and all Contributors for the Covered Software under Section 2.1 of this License shall terminate.

5.3. In the event of termination under Sections 5.1 or 5.2 above, all end user license agreements (excluding distributors and resellers) which have been validly granted by You or Your distributors under this License prior to termination shall survive termination.

1. 6. Disclaimer of Warranty

Covered Software is provided under this License on an “as is” basis, without warranty of any kind, either expressed, implied, or statutory, including, without limitation, warranties that the Covered Software is free of defects, merchantable, fit for a particular purpose or non-infringing. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Covered Software is with You. Should any Covered Software prove defective in any respect, You (not any Contributor) assume the cost of any necessary servicing, repair, or correction. This disclaimer of warranty constitutes an essential part of this License. No use of any Covered Software is authorized under this License except under this disclaimer.

1. 7. Limitation of Liability

Under no circumstances and under no legal theory, whether tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, shall any Contributor, or anyone who distributes Covered Software as permitted above, be liable to You for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character including, without limitation, damages for lost profits, loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses, even if such party shall have been informed of the possibility of such damages. This limitation of liability shall not apply to liability for death or personal injury resulting from such party’s negligence to the extent applicable law prohibits such limitation. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so this exclusion and limitation may not apply to You.

1. 8. Litigation

Any litigation relating to this License may be brought only in the courts of a jurisdiction where the defendant maintains its principal place of business and such litigation shall be governed by laws of that jurisdiction, without reference to its conflict-of-law provisions. Nothing in this Section shall prevent a party’s ability to bring cross-claims or counter-claims.

1. 9. Miscellaneous

This License represents the complete agreement concerning the subject matter hereof. If any provision of this License is held to be unenforceable, such provision shall be reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable. Any law or regulation which provides that the language of a contract shall be construed against the drafter shall not be used to construe this License against a Contributor.

1. 10. Versions of the License
   1. 10.1. New Versions

Mozilla Foundation is the license steward. Except as provided in Section 10.3, no one other than the license steward has the right to modify or publish new versions of this License. Each version will be given a distinguishing version number.

1. 10.2. Effect of New Versions

You may distribute the Covered Software under the terms of the version of the License under which You originally received the Covered Software, or under the terms of any subsequent version published by the license steward.

1. 10.3. Modified Versions

If you create software not governed by this License, and you want to create a new license for such software, you may create and use a modified version of this License if you rename the license and remove any references to the name of the license steward (except to note that such modified license differs from this License).

1. 10.4. Distributing Source Code Form that is Incompatible With Secondary Licenses

If You choose to distribute Source Code Form that is Incompatible With Secondary Licenses under the terms of this version of the License, the notice described in Exhibit B of this License must be attached.

1. Exhibit A - Source Code Form License Notice

This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this file, You can obtain one at https://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.

If it is not possible or desirable to put the notice in a particular file, then You may include the notice in a location (such as a LICENSE file in a relevant directory) where a recipient would be likely to look for such a notice.

You may add additional accurate notices of copyright ownership.

1. Exhibit B - “Incompatible With Secondary Licenses” Notice

This Source Code Form is “Incompatible With Secondary Licenses”, as defined by the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0.

• — New Features and Fixes

1. 1. 6.0.1 (nn January 2022)
   2. 5.8.1.212 (23 December 2021)  
      1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.7.3 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. Already migrating? Preparing to migrate?

If you are mid-migration, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading (or downgrading) your LinkFixer Advanced version. We can offer you advice tailored to your exact situation.

In general, “don’t upgrade software without cause during a migration” is good advice. Here are some specific suggestions.

If you are still in the early testing phase of a migration with any earlier released version, you should probably upgrade to 5.8.1 instead. But it depends on your needs and your schedule.

If you were planning to upgrade to any 5.7 release, upgrade to 5.8.1 instead.

Tip: Before using 5.8.1, please take the time to understand and configure the new and modified settings related to processing SharePoint pages and ASP files. 5.8.1 will process SharePoint pages (specialized ASP files) that earlier LinkFixer Advanced releases did not support.

Please contact LinkTek Support if you have any questions about when you should upgrade.

1. New

• Added support for three new things:

• SharePoint Site Pages
• SharePoint Wiki Pages
• SharePoint Web Part Pages

• We added the “Multimedia” group to the list of file type checkboxes in Select Files and Select Links. This group contains three checkboxes — Audio, Image, and Video. LinkFixer Advanced’s support for these types of files is not new, but these types of files can now be included in jobs without having to process all files or create expert filtering rules which include their extensions.
• Select Files and Select Links | Define Expert Filtering Rules box: We added a new entry named “File Type” to the Component pull-down list. This lets you filter files or links based on the general type of file. For example, choosing “Excel” will match multiple Excel files’ file extensions. Previously, you had to know the file extensions for each file type to include them in an expert filtering rule, which was tedious and error-prone.
• We now show the current date, time, computer name, and Windows user name on the bottom bar of the LinkFixer Advanced window. This is to help users and LinkTek Support personnel.

1. Improved

• SharePoint performance improvement double-whammy. This is a direct speed improvement for things like the “Counting Files” phase. And it reduces the number of requests sent to SharePoint, thereby reducing throttling.
• Updated the visual style of our tooltips and improved their behavior.
• Preview: Improved how path changes (green and red text) are represented.
• Various user-interface improvements.

1. Fixed

• Two major fixes for special filesystem cases on Windows Server:

• Fixed a bug preventing LinkFixer Advanced from seeing some files stored on deduplicated file systems.
• Fixed a bug preventing LinkFixer Advanced from seeing some files stored on distributed file systems (DFS).

• Fixed a case where we weren’t handling plus signs (“+”) in UNC links properly. Child files would be reported as missing even if they were not missing.
• Fixed a rare case where X-axis labels in Excel charts linked to PowerPoint files could be removed during Inoculate. The solution was to use an earlier version of a third-party library.
• Reduced the amount of SQLite logging which 5.7.3 was performing.
• Various bug fixes.

1. 5.7.3 (31 October 2021)
   1. What’s new?

This update has exactly two improvements over 5.7.2:

• We upgraded our SQLite database engine to the latest version. No big deal.
• LinkFixer Advanced will now process up to four files at a time when using its built-in SQLite database. Previously, LinkFixer Advanced would only process one file at a time when using SQLite. To gain this speed improvement, you do not need to change any settings — it just works.

1. Who needs this update?

This SQLite-focused update makes LinkFixer Advanced faster out of the box. SQLite is for people doing evaluations, testing, and other relatively small jobs, where convenience (minimal setup) is more important than maximum performance.

When performance really matters (like on a production migration job), we recommend you use SQL Server. Nothing about SQL Server has changed since LinkFixer Advanced 5.7.2. If you are using 5.7.2 with SQL Server, you do not need this update.

If you have a version older than 5.7.2, read the 5.7.2 entry below to determine when you should upgrade to 5.7.2. If you decide to upgrade to 5.7.2, you might as well upgrade to 5.7.3 instead.

1. 5.7.2 (21 September 2021)
   1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.7.1 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. Already migrating? Preparing to migrate?

In general, “don’t upgrade software without cause during a migration” is good advice. Here are some specific suggestions.

This release (since it includes all of the 5.7.1 release’s improvements) is a substantial update to the excellent 5.6.3 release. If you are mid-migration with 5.6.3 and don’t require any of the things we’ve improved in 5.7.1 and 5.7.2, you should probably consider finishing your migration with 5.6.3.

If you are still in the early testing phase of a migration with 5.7.1, 5.6.3, or any earlier released version, you should probably upgrade to this new version (5.7.2). But it depends on your needs and your schedule.

If you were planning to upgrade to 5.7.1, upgrade to 5.7.2 instead. It is basically the same except for behind-the-scenes improvements which we consider very safe.

This release is an upgrade to the excellent 5.7.1 release. If you are mid-migration with 5.7.1, it is probably very safe to upgrade to 5.7.2 at any time.

Please contact LinkTek Support if you have any questions about when you should upgrade.

1. New

• Home Screen: Added an expandable bottom tray to the home screen. This new tray contains buttons to help users easily jump to important features and settings:

• DGN Files: Added support for DGN file reference attachments (links) created by MicroStation CONNECT Edition!
• PDF Files: Added support for links in PDF files which contain Unicode characters.
• PDF Files: Versions of LinkFixer Advanced prior to 5.7.1 (5.6.3 and earlier) could cause some DocuSign-signed PDF files to become unopenable in a number of PDF viewers. This new version (5.7.2) detects such unopenable PDF files and reports them as result code 6009. This version also adds a repair feature to make those PDF files openable in any PDF viewer again. For instructions on how to use that repair feature, please contact Support@LinkTek.com.
• Cure: Added the ability (enabled by default) to include Phase 1 (Scan) information in Cure’s detailed (.csv) reports. Previously, information from Phase 1 was not included in Cure’s detailed (.csv) reports. This is consistent with how we already handle the only other two-phase process, Move/Rename.
• Minor: We now install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 redistributable runtime package.

1. Fixed

• Fixed some bugs in the handling of links in PDF files.
• Excel .xls files with “workbook structure” protection enabled with a password were being skipped. We now process these files. Bug did not impact .xlsx files.
• Fixed a narrow case where certain links to files stored in SharePoint Online would not get cured. These links were being skipped with the error “Ensure the child file exists” but the child file did exist.
• Disabling Settings | Modify Links | Process broken links did not work. Fixed.
• Disabling Settings | Modify Links | Process working (non-broken) links did not work. Fixed.
• Various minor bug fixes.

1. Improved

• Renamed detailed report (.csv) file column “Inoculation Status” to “Link Status” to match summary report (.pdf) and pie chart labels.
• Various user interface improvements.

1. 5.7.1.127 (22 July 2021)
   1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.6.3 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. Already migrating or preparing to migrate?

In general, “don’t upgrade software without cause during a migration” is good advice. Here are some specific suggestions.

5.7.1 is a substantial upgrade to the excellent 5.6 family of releases. This is not a minor upgrade.

If you are mid-migration with 5.6.3 and don’t require any of the improvements in 5.7.1, you should probably consider finishing your migration with 5.6.3.

If you are still in the early testing phase of a migration with any released version prior to 5.7.1, you should probably upgrade to 5.7.1 and perform your testing with it. But it depends on your needs and your schedule.

If you were planning to upgrade to 5.6.3 and are not currently in the middle of a migration, upgrade to 5.7.1 instead.

Please contact LinkTek Support if you have any questions about when you should upgrade.

1. New — LinkTek Labs

We added the “LinkTek Labs” settings category. This is a place for users to explore early-access features and provide us with feedback. LinkTek Labs includes:

• A new performance setting to only check whether a link is working or broken if we are modifying that link. Default: Check all links, the legacy behavior.
• A new performance setting to only add a file ID to files we know are a parent file or a child file. Default: Add file ID to all files, the legacy behavior.
• The ability to enable/disable processing of Microsoft Office macros. Previously, macro processing was not optional. Default: Do not process links in macros.
• Limited support for Office Data Connection links to .odc files in Excel 2007 parent files. Default: Do not process these links.

1. New

We now support links to Excel charts in PowerPoint (.pptx and .ppt) parent files.

1. Fixed

• Some PDF files generated by DocuSign could not be opened after being inoculated. This bug is fixed in 5.7.1. This resulted in no known data loss whatsoever. We are working on a version of LinkFixer Advanced which makes these PDFs openable again.
• After modification by LinkFixer Advanced, some PowerPoint .pptx files could no longer be opened. This results in no known data loss whatsoever. Workaround: Use PowerPoint’s “Recover” feature when opening one of these files. Cause: A bug in a third-party library used for PowerPoint files, which has now been fixed.
• Users of 5.6.3 who had not yet activated their LinkFixer Advanced license (which includes trial version users) would get an error on launch due to a benign (but annoying) check for updates bug. Fixed. The workaround was to activate the license.
• Fixed the ability to restore file modification timestamps and “modified by” usernames in SharePoint On-Premises 2010.
• Fixed a case where certain Excel spreadsheets could not be opened.
• Fixed a case where we were matching links which were the result of a formula in an Excel cell. These should have been ignored.

• Fixed a bug in how Cure reports non-curable UNC links. We were always reporting them as not curable link types (similar to how we report mailto links — not supported by Cure), but in reality the child file was either not found, or the link was not inoculated. UNC links are curable if they are inoculated and the child file can be found.
• Fixed an extremely rare case (only seen once and we could not reproduce it so we had to simulate it) where our controller would fail to kill a stuck agent and the controller would get into an infinite loop. Symptom was a stalled Cure.
• Strange window coordinates could get stored in our settings file, causing LinkFixer Advanced to fail to launch. We now check for this strange case.
• Various minor bug fixes.

 

1. Improved

• Improved the speed of processing modern Excel (2007 format) spreadsheets.
• Made significant improvements to our handling of links in Microsoft Office macros.
• We now actively warn users that “Office 365” authentication does not support restoring file modification timestamps and “modified by” usernames. Our message encourages the user to use an authentication method which does support the restoration of those modification values. Previously, this information was only in a tooltip.
• We found a way to send one SharePoint request per folder link, instead of two. This should reduce throttling.
• Improved our logging of SharePoint throttling.

• Improved how wrapped text in bullets looks in tooltips.
• Network Locations: We now export passwords in an encrypted form, rather than in the clear. This applies to SharePoint site list CSV files and SharePoint user list CSV files.
• When processing files in SharePoint, OneDrive and OpenText, we would only remove temporary files after the job was complete. Now we remove temporary files as we go, which uses less disk space.
• Improved our PowerPoint (.pptx and .ppt) support by upgrading the third-party PowerPoint library we use.
• Select Folders: Improved how we sort lists of SharePoint sites, sub-sites and folders. Folders and sites/sub-sites are no longer commingled.
• Select Folders: Improved how the “Jump to location” field behaves.
• Minor user interface improvements.

1. 5.6.3.76 (14 May 2021)
   1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.6.2 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. Already migrating or preparing to migrate?

In general, “don’t upgrade software without cause during a migration” is good advice. So here are some specific suggestions.

This release (since it includes all of the 5.6.1 and 5.6.2 releases’ improvements) is a substantial update to the excellent 5.5.27 release. If you are mid-migration with 5.5.27 and don’t require any of the things we’ve improved in 5.6.1, 5.6.2, and 5.6.3, you should probably consider finishing your migration with 5.5.27.

If you are still in the early testing phase of a migration with 5.6.2 or any earlier released version, you should probably upgrade to this new version (5.6.3). But it depends on your needs and your schedule.

If you were planning to upgrade to 5.6.1 or 5.6.2, upgrade to 5.6.3 instead. It is basically the same except for behind-the-scenes improvements which we consider very safe.†

This release is a minor upgrade to the excellent 5.6.1 and 5.6.2 releases. If you are mid-migration with 5.6.1 or 5.6.2, it is probably very safe to upgrade to 5.6.3 at any time.†

Please contact LinkTek Support if you have any questions about when you should upgrade.

† Just budget a little time to upgrade your site list CSV files, if you use any. See details in the next section.

1. New

We added a great new feature for users migrating to or from multiple SharePoint Online or OneDrive sites:

• Network Locations | {Import…} now lets you import multiple SharePoint/OneDrive username/password pairs for each site listed in your site list CSV file.

Previously, you had to first import your site list CSV file and then import your user list CSV file into each site individually — even if it was the same user list for every site. The more sites you needed to set up, the more time this would take.

Now your site list CSV file can have any number of username/password pairs (not just one) defined in it, so you can import everything (site list and user list) in one go.

To create a multi-user site list CSV file:

1. Manually create two SharePoint Online (or OneDrive) site entries in the Network Locations box of LinkFixer Advanced 5.6.3 or later. No need to create more than two at this point.
2. Manually enter username/password credentials in each of those sites. Two credentials per site is sufficient and they can be the same two credentials for both sites.
3. Use Network Locations | {Export…} to create a site list CSV file.
4. Open and edit that site list CSV file in Microsoft Excel. (Be sure to keep it as a CSV file — don’t upgrade it to Excel format.)
5. Follow the format already defined in the site list CSV file. Add entries for your other sites and add your set of username/password pairs under each site definition.
6. When you’re done, use Network Locations | {Import…} to load your multi-user site list CSV file into LinkFixer Advanced 5.6.3.

If you need any help, please contact us at Support@LinkTek.com.

1. Fixed

A handful of fixes:

• Cure: Fixed a stall reported by one user. Cause: A third-party library used for filetype detection was failing on an Excel spreadsheet containing a very specific kind of corruption.
• Fixed a narrow case where we would fail to upgrade our database to add two new-in-5.6.2 columns.
• Network Locations | Configure | SharePoint: Fixed a case where the {OK} button would be disabled when importing a CSV file containing a list of SharePoint Online credentials.
• Preview: Fixed a couple of display-only bugs.
• View Results: Fixed some cases where we would present incorrect or confusing counts.

1. Improved

Some little improvements:

• Minor user interface improvements.
• Added day name to the date at the top of our PDF-format summary reports.
• Network Locations: The default CSV filename for exported site lists and exported user account lists now includes the date and time.

1. 5.6.2.19 (13 April 2021)
   1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.6.1 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. Already migrating or preparing to migrate?

In general, “don’t upgrade software without cause during a migration” is good advice. So here are some specific suggestions.

This release (since it includes all of the 5.6.1 release’s improvements) is a substantial update to the excellent 5.5.27 release. If you are mid-migration with 5.5.27 and don’t require any of the things we’ve improved in 5.6.1 and 5.6.2, you should probably consider finishing your migration with 5.5.27.

If you are still in the early testing phase of a migration with 5.6.1, 5.5.27, or any earlier released version, you should probably upgrade to this new version (5.6.2). But it depends on your needs and your schedule.

If you were planning to upgrade to 5.6.1, upgrade to 5.6.2 instead. It is basically the same except for behind-the-scenes improvements which we consider very safe.

This release is a minor upgrade to the excellent 5.6.1 release. If you are mid-migration with 5.6.1, it is probably very safe to upgrade to 5.6.2 at any time.

Please contact LinkTek Support if you have any questions about when you should upgrade.

1. New

New features:

• Update agent’s processing timestamp during SharePoint throttling so controller knows not to restart the agent. This way still-healthy agents will be allowed to continue processing their files during times of sustained (greater than ten minutes) SharePoint throttling.
• Immediately after an agent has to be restarted, query SharePoint to see if that agent’s last-requested parent file is still checked out. SharePoint throttling during an agent restart could possibly prevent such files from being logged in our database as being checked out by us, so we could possibly leave them checked out in very rare cases.

1. Fixed

We fixed a lot of small stuff and one (Loch Ness) monster:

• A stall which would happen unpredictably and only during large (generally multi-day) jobs. This bug would pop up every once in a while and then submerge for a very long time, making it difficult to locate. If you are not mid-migration, this fix is probably enough reason to upgrade from any earlier released version to 5.6.2.
• Email notifications would sometimes falsely report “process terminated” when the process completed successfully.

• A SharePoint authentication problem involving special characters in passwords.
• An error encountered when adding a SharePoint On-Premises 2016 site in Network Locations.
• A rare case where logging would stop, but processing would continue.
• A 5.6.1 bug where Preview would say some SharePoint links could not be cured, but they actually could be cured.
• Very minor: LinkFixer Advanced would sometimes fail to recycle its agent ID numbers.

1. Changed

Updated the LinkTek End-User License Agreement (EULA).

1. 5.6.1 (5 March 2021)

This is a major release of LinkFixer Advanced.

1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.5.27 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. Already migrating or preparing to migrate?

In general, “don’t upgrade software without cause during a migration” is good advice.

This release is a substantial upgrade to the excellent 5.5.27 release. If you are mid-migration with 5.5.27 and don’t require any of the things we’ve improved in this new version, you may want to consider finishing your migration with 5.5.27.

If you are still in the early testing phase of a migration with 5.5.27, you should probably upgrade to this version. But it depends on your needs and your schedule.

Please contact LinkTek Support if you have any questions about when you should upgrade.

1. Increased Stability

We identified and handled a number of cases where jobs would temporarily stall or permanently halt.

1. Preview Panel — Major User Interface Overhaul

We did a complete visual overhaul of the Preview panel. Behind the scenes, Preview has not changed much, but it should be considerably easier to understand now.

Here is what the Preview panel previously looked like (example from 5.3.0):

Here is what the Preview panel looks like now:

1. User Interface Improvements

We made improvements to the user interface, including:

• Total visual overhaul of Preview panel, as described above
• Added a {​​Next Step…}​​ button to help you navigate through each step of setting up a job.
• Select Folders: Major improvements to the “Jump to location:” field.
• Select Folders: Added column header sorting to the folder browser pane.
• Various tooltip improvements
• Clarified wording of some pie chart “slices”.
• Minor improvements to what goes into certain pie chart “slices”
• You can now display release notes from the ☰ menu. Previously, this was handled via a shortcut in the installation folder.
• Email notifications now include the name of the computer running LinkFixer Advanced.
• Minor reorganization of Settings categories and entries
• When the main window is maximized, you can now (finally) restore (un-maximize) it by dragging its title bar.
• Renamed “Process Files” page to “Run Report” in the Reports process.
• Numerous additional user interface improvements

1. Bug Fixes

We made numerous bug fixes, including:

• Some cases where agents (the sub-processes that processes parent files and child files) would go idle
• Fixed a number of performance bottlenecks.
• Fixed some hard-to-isolate memory leaks.
• File exclusion lists were being used even when the setting was disabled.
• LinkFixer Advanced would sometimes be unable to start a new process if user canceled the previous process before completion.

1. Code Signing (Digital Signatures)

1. We now apply a digital signature to LinkTek-created executable files delivered with LinkFixer Advanced. Previously, we only digitally signed the setup programs, not the executables installed by those setup programs. Signing all of our executable files should reduce the (already very rare) incidence of false-positive malware detection alerts during LinkFixer Advanced processing.
2. We renewed our digital code-signing certificate, which happens every three years. While the new certificate gains a reputation of trust through use, you may get a Windows SmartScreen warning at some or all of the following times:

• When you start the installation
• During installation
• When you start LinkFixer Advanced
• During a LinkFixer Advanced processing job

1. Restore Sample Files

☰ | Settings | General | {Refresh Sample Files} has been completely re-written and renamed to {Restore Sample Files}. Previously, it simply ran a self-extracting archive. Replacing that self-extracting archive with a software feature decreased our surface area for false-positive anti-malware alerts, though these were very rare. More importantly, doing this allowed us to provide users with better error handling.

1. Filetype-Specific Improvements

Visio .vsd files:

• Added support for links containing Unicode characters in Visio .vsd parent files.
• Visio .vsd files will now be inoculated using the new data format introduced in 5.5.8. This means they cannot be Cured by a pre-5.6.1 version if they are inoculated by 5.6.1 or later.

Improved stability of Access .mdb and .accdb file handling.

Fixed a problem handling Power Query links in .xlsx files. (If you don’t already use Power Query, we don’t recommend clicking on that hyperlink. Definitely not required reading for most users.)

1. Removals

We removed some things from LinkFixer Advanced in this release:

• Removed Settings | Performance:. We plan to create the next generation of this feature before restoring this setting. We may even be able to accomplish a level of dynamic performance optimization that makes a setting unnecessary.

If you have the need to increase or decrease LinkFixer Advanced’s overall performance, please contact LinkTek Support. We will be happy to make a recommendation based upon your exact situation.

• The Modify and Move/Rename processes had “Before Preview” and “After Preview” panels. Now these processes have just one Preview panel and it contains “Before” and “After” columns.
• Removed three Visio file extensions which crept into Select Files | File Extensions: .vdw, .vss, and .vst. We don’t support these particular Visio files.

1. 5.5.27 (18 December 2020)
   1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.5.8 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. New in 5.5.27 — Text-Format File Character Encoding Detection

The following includes all supported text-format files, regardless of their file extension (.html, and so on). LinkFixer Advanced only supports text-format files containing certain specific, structured content (such as HTML and XML files). And LinkFixer Advanced does not support unstructured text-format files.

All previous versions of LinkFixer Advanced save text-format files in the character encoding defined in Windows on the computer running LinkFixer Advanced.

Now LinkFixer Advanced attempts to identify the following character encodings when processing text-format files:

• ASCII
• UTF-8 (With Byte Order Mark)
• UTF-8 (Without Byte Order Mark)
• UTF-32 (Big-Endian)
• UTF-32 (Little-Endian)

If LinkFixer Advanced does not determine that a text-format file’s encoding is one of those above, it will save that file using the encoding defined in Windows on the computer running LinkFixer Advanced.

Note: Text character encoding determination is not a foolproof process. We plan to continue to improve our character encoding detection over time. If you encounter any character encoding problems, however minor, please report them to Support@LinkTek.com or call LinkTek Support at 727-442-1822.

1. Fixed in 5.5.27

5.5.8 introduced occasional stalling during large jobs. This update (5.5.27) fixes all known cases of stalling introduced by 5.5.8. (We are also working on a follow-up release that fixes some other causes of stalling — these are more rare and they were not introduced in 5.5.8.)

OpenText only: While adding support in 5.5.8 for password-protected Excel and Word files, we introduced a narrow-scope filetype identification bug which is limited to OpenText:

• .xlsm and .docm files have their MIME types changed to non-macro-enabled versions of their formats.
• These two types of files get checked out of OpenText with their extensions modified to match those incorrect MIME types — .xlsx and .docx, instead of .xlxm and .docm.

•  5.5.8 (9 October 2020)

This is a major release of LinkFixer Advanced.

1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.4.53 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

• New in 5.5.8 — Password-Protected Files Support!

• Added support for processing password-protected Excel spreadsheets!
• Added support for processing password-protected Word documents!

1. New in 5.5.8 — Excel .xls Unicode Support

Added support for links containing Unicode characters in Excel .xls parent files.

1. Changed in 5.5.8 — New Inoculation Data Format

Upgraded the format of the inoculation data LinkFixer Advanced stores in the majority of its supported file types. This new inoculation data format is compressed, encrypted, and also modularized. This makes it fast to process, very secure, and more resilient than earlier formats.

Important: LinkFixer Advanced versions prior to 5.5.8 will not recognize and will not support this new inoculation data format. LinkFixer Advanced 5.5.8 does recognize and fully retains support for inoculation data stored in your files by earlier LinkFixer Advanced versions.

For example, you can inoculate your files with 5.5.8 and then cure those files with some future version of LinkFixer Advanced. But you cannot inoculate your files with 5.5.8 and then cure them with an earlier version of LinkFixer Advanced.

• Inoculation Data — Technical Details and Reasoning

Our inoculation data includes link information from inside inoculated parent files. Now that 5.5.8 adds support for password-protected Excel and Word files, we did not want to expose anything about the content of your password-protected files by storing our inoculation data in the clear. The privacy of your data is as important to us as the integrity of your data.

So the inoculation data had to be encrypted. And that made the inoculation data longer (larger). So, to keep it high-performance, we had to compress it. And, since it was longer than it used to be, it also sometimes needed to be broken up into smaller “chunks” to make it survive (whenever possible) users editing their files after inoculating them. This last point varies by file type and should only matter if you are editing your inoculated files before curing them.

Rather than only encrypt the inoculation data for password-protected files, we decided to encrypt the data by default for all file types that use this new inoculation data format.

This upgrade of our inoculation data format was necessary because we take seriously our responsibility to maintain the privacy of your links.

1. Removed

This release retires the “Classic” user interface version of LinkFixer Advanced. It had been made available via the ☰ menu since the release of 5.0 in order to help users gradually transition to the new, modernized user interface.

1. Fixed in 5.5.8

Numerous minor user interface improvements.

Numerous minor bugfixes.

1. 5.4.53 (10 July 2020)
   1.  Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.4.40 and earlier released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. Fixed

Major stability improvement to our Adobe InDesign file handling.

Plus signs (‘+’) in links were omitted from output links during Cure in SharePoint. Re-running Cure with version 5.4.53 (or certain earlier beta versions) will repair this link harm.

Move/Rename would skip certain links containing plus signs (‘+’) in SharePoint Online.

Could not cure certain links containing a percent sign (‘%’).

Failed to detect a particular malformed link produced by a user-created Modify Links rule.

The Select Folders | [Files] node could not be processed individually. You had to include the folder containing those files.

A case where LinkFixer Advanced would count files in a folder above the selected folder in SharePoint Online. It would still process the correct files.

A SharePoint site collection authentication problem.

A case where Move/Rename fails to copy from SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online.

A case where Move/Rename copies files instead of moving them while migrating from a local folder or network share to SharePoint Online, even when the option to “Copy files instead of moving them” is OFF.

1. Improved

Added additional automatic corrections for user-provided site collection URLs.

1. Installer

We now deliver the Visual C++ 2013 redistributable package. This is used by our .xls file handler. We still deliver the Visual C++ 2010 redistributable package, which is used by various other file handlers.

We stopped delivering legacy .doc (Word) and .ppt (PowerPoint) file handler DLLs. These were retired in an earlier release and kept in the distribution until now as part of their gradual deprecation.

1. 5.4.40 (1 June 2020)

Added a popup box to alert SQLite database users that they will achieve higher performance by using SQL Server.

Added an Information Security FAQ chapter to this guide.

1. 5.4.38 (15 April 2020)

This is a major release of LinkFixer Advanced.

1. Who needs this update?

This is a recommended update for all users of LinkFixer Advanced 5.3.0 and previous released versions.

Beta Version Users: If you rely on a pre-release (“beta”) version of LinkFixer Advanced, please contact LinkTek Support before upgrading. This is very important. Your beta version may include a feature or fix which is critical to your migration. That feature or fix may not be present in this released version.

You can also check below to see if your critical features or fixes are included in this release.

1. New in 5.4.38

We are delighted to announce:

• Our SharePoint Online anti-throttling technology is now available to Office 365 authentication users! Numerous large-scale migrations have proven this to be extremely effective at reducing or avoiding throttling imposed by SharePoint Online.

Until now, this technology was only available with “User name/password” authentication — meaning no support for multi-factor authentication (“MFA”) and other modern authentication features.

Now you can accomplish top-speed SharePoint Online migrations without having to temporarily give up multi-factor authentication or create legacy user accounts.

• Network Locations: We added a second Office 365 authentication option. This new option, “Office 365” authentication, removes the {Admin Consent} requirement. This gives the vast majority of users everything they need and nothing they don’t.

Both of LinkFixer Advanced 5.4’s Office 365 authentication options (including our new option) support our SharePoint Online anti-throttling technology.

Technical Note: If your migration involves SharePoint document IDs, please contact LinkTek Technical Support and ask whether you should use “Office 365 with admin consent” authentication. There are still some (fairly uncommon) cases where you should use that authentication option if you’re dealing with SharePoint document IDs. It’s fast and easy for us to figure this out with you via phone or email — we just need to know a little bit about your particular migration.

• We added support for SharePoint On-Premises 2019.

1. Improved in 5.4.38

Network Locations: Major overhaul of how we establish imported SharePoint network connections and re-establish all types of network locations whenever LinkFixer Advanced is started. This “just works” and vastly improves the experience when working with large amounts of network connections and with overloaded SharePoint servers.

Various minor user interface improvements.

1. Fixed in 5.4.38

Various stability fixes.

 

1. 5.3.0 (13 December 2019)
   1. New in 5.3

SharePoint Improvements

Added the ability to define a pool of SharePoint Online user accounts for LinkFixer Advanced to use during processing. This feature distributes SharePoint Online operation requests across those accounts and considerably reduces the chance of a request being throttled. This feature works exclusively with “User name/password authentication”. A future version of LinkFixer Advanced will add support for this feature to the “Office 365 authentication” option.

Added setting to enable/disable SharePoint email alerts during LinkFixer Advanced processing.

Processing Speed

Made a major improvement to the speed of LinkFixer Advanced’s Cure process. If a migrated file is already in the database (because it has already been scanned) and its modification timestamp has not changed, Cure will no longer re-scan that file. This is a huge speed optimization for many common migration scenarios.

OneDrive Support

Added support for Microsoft OneDrive in Network Locations.

1. Reporting

Added a setting to let users choose to combine LinkFixer Advanced’s three detailed reports into a single report file.

1. OpenText

Added support for OpenText Content Server “nicknames.” These are a special shorthand way of referring to links in OpenText Content Server.

1. Settings

Added the ability to sort the Network Locations list by any of its columns. Previously, there was no sorting ability in this list.

1. Fixed in 5.3

Made numerous stability improvements based on feedback from clients.

Improved our handling of Excel .xlsx files.

Certain filetypes would have their creation date changed during processing. We now restore their creation dates.

Fixed a case where we would sometimes save a file that we did not modify any links in. This was an unnecessary change. This fix will slightly improve processing speed.

Fixed a rare bug where LinkFixer Advanced would display a “No Files Found” message during Scan.

1. 5.2.0 (22 June 2019)
   1. New in 5.2
      1. New Authentication Method

Added Office 365 authentication as a new way of authenticating to SharePoint Online. Office 365 authentication supports Microsoft’s modern authentication features, including multi-factor authentication (“MFA”) and SAML-based third-party identity providers like Okta.

If you require other authentication options, please contact us at 727-442-1822 or ​Support@LinkTek.com.

1. More Speed

Version 5.2 features major performance improvements that should be noticeable by every user of LinkFixer Advanced working with files stored on local drives or on shared network drives.

1. Long Filenames

Processing files with long filenames (paths longer than 260 characters) is now enabled by default.

Tip: LinkFixer Advanced 5.2 processes long filenames faster than earlier versions could process short filenames. If you never have long filenames, you can still squeeze a small additional performance increase out of LinkFixer Advanced by disabling “Long filename support” in the settings.

1. Huge SharePoint Folders

Added support for SharePoint folders containing more than 5,000 items.

Technical Details: This is even better than it sounds, but it’s a little bit technical.

LinkFixer Advanced 5.2 actually overcomes the SharePoint “List View Threshold” (“LVT”) limitation entirely — even if a user had their LVT limit set to more than the common value of 5,000.

When using LinkFixer Advanced 5.2, your LVT limit is just not a concern when fixing your links anymore!

1. File Exclusion Lists

Added a new feature called “File Exclusion Lists”. This feature allows you to create a list of files to exclude from processing. Use this when you need to exclude certain files from processing and it is impossible (or impractical) to exclude them any other way.

This can massively reduce total processing time because files you don’t need processed are completely skipped — they’re not adding processing time to your LinkFixer Advanced job. (If you don’t think you need this feature for your migration, you’re almost certainly right. If you do need this feature for your migration, you probably already stopped reading this so you could start building your first file exclusion list!)

1. Upgraded Microsoft Project File Handler

Upgraded our file handler for the Microsoft Project (.MPP) filetype from version 18.12 to 19.4.

1. Fixed in 5.2

Fixed a bug where processing results were shown incorrectly for a canceled job.

If a file from SharePoint or OpenText could not be processed, LinkFixer Advanced will now undo the file’s checkout. Previously, such a file would have been left checked out.

Fixed an obscure bug saving a particular DWG file.

Fixed a bug in “Don’t spend time making multiple attempts to access files on inaccessible folders, drives or servers”.

1. 5.1.0 (4 April 2019)

Made considerable clarifications to LinkFixer Advanced’s tooltips, labels and PDF-format summary reports. All of these improvements are designed to make LinkFixer Advanced easier to use for new users and experienced users.

An initial connection to SharePoint is now done in advance (automatically, in the background) to prevent brief delays for users. Previously, this connection to SharePoint was done upon request, often resulting in a brief delay for users if SharePoint took a long time to respond.

Turned “Long filename support” off by default.

Fixed a problem handling some DWG 2018 files.

Fixed a problem preventing the processing of some SQL Server database files which was introduced in 5.0.0.

Fixed a very rare problem that would intermittently prevent Inoculate from starting.

1. 5.0.0 (15 February 2019)

LinkFixer Advanced 5.0 features the biggest facelift in its history. LinkFixer Advanced’s user interface has been completely redesigned based on numerous usability labs and customer feedback from IT professionals like yourself. LinkFixer Advanced 5.0 is a whole new experience — friendlier than ever but with the same power to handle thousands of links in minutes.

1. New in 5.0

In the past, SharePoint Online didn’t allow number signs (“#”), also known as pound signs or hash signs, in folder names. Now that these are allowed in SharePoint Online and seem to be in broad use, LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to also process folders containing these symbols.

Greatly improved the speed of processing Microsoft Access database files. Depending on your computer’s resources, new processing speeds could reach 10X faster when processing your Access database files.

LinkFixer Advanced has been updated to offer Import/Export in the Network Locations window. This allows users with lots of network locations to add all these much faster. For example, if your company has lots of SharePoint site collections, you can list all of these in a spreadsheet, then import your entire list directly into LinkFixer Advanced using a comma-separated values (“CSV”) file.

LinkFixer Advanced 5.0 adds the ability to browse SharePoint sites while creating Move/Rename and Modify Link rules.

LinkFixer Advanced 5.0 adds improved handling of really long paths. Filenames and links containing more than 259 characters will now get processed, by default, without having to turn on additional options.

Version 5.0 features performance improvements in several areas including checking online status of network locations, folder browsing and timeouts in SharePoint.

In our journey of enhancing the LinkFixer Advanced user experience, {Restore Default Settings} was revised to exclude folder selections, filters, rules and network locations. This means you can restore LinkFixer Advanced to its factory defaults without having to re-select folders for processing and without having to reset your filters or rules. Whatever you set before in those areas will remain.

Resolved a LinkFixer Advanced issue that previously had prevented users from removing invalid entries from their list of network locations. Now users can remove these easily.

Handled a LinkFixer file handler problem where an embedded PowerPoint file could not be processed.

Resolved a bug with PowerPoint files where certain Excel links were not being detected consistently.

Resolved a LinkFixer Advanced Excel file handler issue where certain links containing specific Unicode characters were not being processed.

Fixed a browsing issue where the folder browser would sometimes not navigate SharePoint URLs properly.

Fixed an issue where the files in the root folder of a SharePoint document library were not getting processed.

Fixed a problem saving links and link IDs in some PDF files.

Fixed an issue with Unicode links in PPTX files found during internal testing.

Added advanced support for Access database links in XLSX files.

Technical Details: Previously, LinkFixer Advanced had no support for Access database links in XLSX files. This version takes us from “no support” to “advanced support.”

No change was made to Access database link support in XLS files (the old Excel format). For XLS files, basic support for Access database links was already available has not changed in this version. We plan to bring our advanced support to XLS files’ Access database links in the near future.

Fixed an issue where LinkFixer Advanced was not allowing spaces in Move/Rename and Modify Links rules.

Fixed a rare bug where some links to SharePoint site collections were being reported as web URLs.

1. 4.4.0 (14 September 2018)

After months of work, this release introduces enhancements in the SharePoint area that have been requested by customers for years. The biggest area having to do with how LinkFixer Advanced processes files in SharePoint. Previous versions would require users to map network drives to each SharePoint site collection. In occasions, companies would have hundreds or even thousands of them. With new LinkFixer Advanced 4.4, users will be able to add new sites effortlessly by simply entering the site URL. This will completely eliminate the need for “mapped drives”.

Additionally, by much popular demand, LinkFixer Advanced 4.4 features the ability to multi-thread when processing files in SharePoint on-premise and online. This allows multiple files to be processed at the same time helping you complete your migration to SharePoint faster than ever!

LinkFixer Advanced’s AutoCAD support has been extended to offer support for AutoCAD 2018 files.

This recommended release fixes a bug where LinkFixer Advanced was not processing links in VBA code which contained specific keywords. This has been handled. VBA keywords are now identified correctly.

A LinkFixer Advanced issue was fixed where specific report options were not properly getting updated in Global Settings.

Resolved a rare issue where log file paths were not being updated properly in the Windows registry settings.

Fixed an issue with LinkFixer Advanced where file filters were being automatically reset after a process finished.

1. 4.3.0 (5 June 2018)

LinkFixer Advanced 4.3.0 features new Excel 2016 link handling. A new type of link in Excel 2016 was being reported as “$Workbook$”. LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to be able to modify, inoculate and cure these new types of Excel links.

LinkFixer Advanced had an issue with SharePoint's major/minor versioning setting being set to major versioning while inoculating files. Additional logging features were added to more easily show various authentication results.

This recommended release fixes a bug that previously crashes when passing a UNC path into the folder browser in LinkFixer Advanced.

Fixed a bug in LinkFixer Advanced where the cure process with OPENTEXT Content Server was not functioning correctly.

Resolved an issue in LinkFixer Advanced where pie charts were not functioning properly.

A bug was resolved where the “Process non-broken links” option in Modify Links does not appear to take effect until after restarting LinkFixer Advanced.

1. 4.2.0 (1 February 2018)

By much popular demand, LinkFixer Advanced 4.2 features the ability to maintain the last modified timestamp field and modified by field on files moved to, from or within SharePoint online and on-premise. In past versions, LinkFixer Advanced would create custom fields in SharePoint where this information would be stored. This is not necessary anymore. LinkFixer Advanced will just retain this metadata on all files as if they were never touched.

LinkFixer Advanced’s Report features have been revamped! These are now faster (in certain cases up to 10X faster) than ever before.

LinkFixer Advanced has now added support for links in SQL queries in Access files.

Resolved an issue in LinkFixer Advanced where the progress animation would continue to function whenever the controller was busy with another process, such as when it was running very large reports.

LinkFixer Advanced had an issue where switching databases would not update the controller’s database settings.

LinkFixer Advanced had an issue with certain reports where previews were not able to execute properly. This was handled.

LinkFixer Advanced had an issue where rename rules for the database were not being set for previews. This is now fixed.

LinkFixer Advanced had an issue with PPTX and DOCX links causing a persistent error needing repair. This is now fixed.

Addressed an issue with LinkFixer Advanced where licenses that have link limits were aborting their processes once the limit was reached.

A LinkFixer Advanced startup error was fixed for very large databases.

A bug was resolved where the LinkFixer Advanced automatic update feature would not close all agents and controller causing an error message to appear.

1. 4.1.20 (21 November 2017)

LinkFixer Advanced bug was handled where the agent and the controller would fail to close, this caused a failure during updates.

A bug was resolved where LinkFixer Advanced would report inaccurate SQL Server database detail in the log.

Under certain conditions, an error was handled in LinkFixer Advanced during inoculate or modify links where the original file would be overwritten as 0kb file.

1. 4.1.18 (10 November 2017)

LinkFixer Advanced 4.1 introduces “Clean Files”. This new feature will effectively clear out your LinkFixer Advanced link IDs within your files after running Inoculate and Cure.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug where certain files were skipped instead of being processed was fixed. On more technical terms, LinkFixer Advanced agents were failing to properly perform a cure process across network shares on certain occasions.

LinkFixer Advanced had a bug where moving your log file caused a persistent error message. LinkFixer Advanced now prompts you for the location of your log file if the file or mapped drive has become unavailable.

After the initial release of 4.1, some customers experienced issues with connecting LinkFixer Advanced to their SQL Server database when using non-domain user accounts. This was handled.

A bug was corrected where LinkFixer Advanced’s file handlers were finding an embedded excel file as the first file type when it should have detected the file as a PowerPoint.

1. 4.1.9 (29 September 2017)

LinkFixer Advanced 4.1 features a new performance setting which provides a very simple way of allowing the user to specify how aggressive LinkFixer Advanced should be with performance. It will monitor your computer's performance while processing files. On a more technical note, the monitor checks CPU and memory resources and will automatically adjust the number of LinkFixer agent processes to ensure the selected performance level is maintained. You will no longer need to determine the correct number of processes to use simplifying your experience with LinkFixer Advanced.

All of LinkFixer Advanced code that could potentially interrupt processing has been moved to a separate controller process. This has been implemented to make LinkFixer Advanced more robust and bulletproof.

LinkFixer Advanced now backs up files by default. Users will be warned at first run that files will be backed up and it will request a location to save backed up files under. This setting and warning can be turned off for subsequent runs.

LinkFixer Advanced’s file handlers have been modified to write changes to a temp file and not the original file. Once modifications are complete, these temp files would then replace the original files. This new functionality prevents rare cases where a file handler may begin to update a file and then fail causing the agent processor to terminate leaving the original file potentially corrupted.

1. 4.0.26 (22 August 2017)

LinkFixer Advanced has been supporting SharePoint Server since 2013. We’re proud to announce that due to popular demand, LinkFixer Advanced now supports SharePoint “Foundation” edition. This is the free edition of SharePoint.

This recommended release fixes a bug that previously caused some folder links in PDF files to not be cured. These folder links are now recognized and cured correctly by LinkFixer Advanced

In some rare occasions, LinkFixer Advanced displayed an “out-of-memory” exception when several LinkFixer Advanced agents (threads) processed certain files containing large numbers of links at the same time. This has been handled.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had caused the Document IDs in links in Word files, pointing to image files in SharePoint, to be truncated when modified in SharePoint by LinkFixer Advanced

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that caused some links pointing to files that had not been inoculated to be cured incorrectly to point to inoculated files with the same name.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was handled that assigned some invalid link IDs in some rare occasions where Inoculate was ran multiple times on the same parent files.

1. 4.0.0 (28 April 2017)

With the release of LinkFixer Advanced 4.0, the world’s most complete automated link fixing solution is even more capable than before. This release adds support for additional brand new file types and new versions of types we previously supported, including:

LinkFixer Advanced now supports Microsoft OneNote files. This is key as more and more people are using OneNote for collaboration and idea sharing, now included as part of Windows 10, Microsoft Office 365 and available on PCs, tablets, IOS, Android and on the web.

LinkFixer Advanced now supports Microsoft Project files. Project users commonly utilize links to pull information together from multiple files. Having this capability included in LinkFixer Advanced will save significant time for businesses involved in construction, extensive product development and other activities where scheduling is key.

LinkFixer Advanced 4.0 adds support for the latest versions of Microsoft Visio (2013 and newer).

LinkFixer Advanced now supports the Adobe InDesign CC (Creative Cloud) 2017. All Creative Cloud subscription users can update to the latest version. At LinkTek, we make sure to remain up-to-date on what our customers need.

LinkFixer Advanced has now been enhanced to support the new IDML file type for Adobe InDesign.

LinkFixer Advanced is now able to process links to external resources (such as images, applets, Flash animations and so on) contained in MIME Hypertext Markup Language (MHTML or MHT) files.

It is now faster and easier for you to request tech support. LinkFixer Advanced now includes a function that will (with your permission) automatically gather, compress and send to LinkTek Tech Support a package of logs, reports, settings files, sample files and other support information in the event of an exception in the program. You can also manually initiate a support request by clicking {Support Ticket} on the Application (blue) tab of the LinkFixer Advanced user interface.

LinkFixer Advanced logs now take up less space on your disk. LinkFixer Advanced logging functions have been enhanced to provide the developers with necessary information in a smaller, more efficient package. In some circumstances, this will also result in an increase in processing speed.

You can now choose to purge old LinkFixer Advanced logs by the total size of the logs or by the age of the log files. This gives you greater control over how log files are stored by LinkFixer Advanced.

Your Microsoft Access MDB and ACCDB files are now processed more quickly. LinkFixer Advanced’s Microsoft Access plug-in was enhanced to find links in Access files more efficiently.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had previously caused the “Last Modified” date and time to be updated to the current date and time for some files that contained Unicode characters in the file path.

A bug was fixed in the handler for text files that occasionally resulted in an “out-of-memory” condition in LinkFixer Advanced.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously caused some broken web links in Microsoft Word (DOCX) files to be reported with an incorrect error code.

A bug was fixed in the Microsoft Word plug-in that previously caused a specific type of link to be truncated by the Modify Links process.

The full “Setup” and “Update” installers for LinkFixer Advanced were merged into a single, unified installer.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had previously caused some links to not be inoculated if “Long File Name” support was enabled.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that had prevented generating a checksum during the Inoculate process for pre-1997 Office child files, child files larger than 2GB and child files with errors.

A bug was fixed in the Adobe Acrobat plug-in that had previously caused PDF files to be corrupted by the Inoculate process in a rare set of circumstances.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that had previously caused some links contained in VBA macros to be incorrectly prefaced with “file:///” during the Inoculate process.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had previously prevented scanning of SQL Server database tables under certain specific conditions.

LinkFixer Advanced’s included SQLite database was updated to version 5.8.862.

• 3.5.0 (28 December 2016)

LinkFixer Advanced’s Scan function is once again faster than it’s ever been. It now scans files and links at least twice as fast as previous versions. This improvement was accomplished by enhancing LinkFixer Advanced to count files and retrieve file data using multiple processing “threads” at the same time. This process previously used only a single processing thread.

LinkFixer Advanced’s Inoculate process is also faster than ever. Links are now inoculated two to three times faster by using multiple processing threads (“Agents”) at the same time.

LinkFixer Advanced can now fix links in more of your PDF files. LinkFixer Advanced’s Adobe Acrobat plug-in has been enhanced to recognize and process links in PDF version 1.7 files, as well as links contained in dynamic forms. Dynamic forms are a type of PDF forms that are fillable online.

It is now easier to use rename rules in the Move/Rename and Modify Links processes. The Rename Rules screen in LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced with the following new features:

If you want to select all of your rename rules, you no longer need to click the selection box beside each box. A “select all” toggle checkbox was added above the rename rules. Clicking the checkbox enables or disables all rename rules.

You no longer need to click the move button multiple times in order to move a rename rule to the top or bottom of the list. “Move top” and “Move bottom” buttons were added to allow a rename rule to be quickly moved to the top or bottom of the list.

You can now preserve and reuse your rename rules. An export button was added to allow rename rules to be saved to a file.

Now you can modify files with a specific file name. A new “Filename” component was added to the “Component to modify” selection, which allows you to specify a combination of the basename and extension components.

You can now be more exact in specifying when LinkFixer Advanced should rename a file path. A new “Exact match” method was added to the “Rename method” selection, which requires the “from” string to exactly match the selected component in order for it to be replaced with the “to” string.

LinkFixer Advanced now more exactly reproduces your folder structure, when running Move/Rename. LinkFixer Advanced’s Move/Rename was enhanced further to create empty folders in the target location, when these empty folders are encountered in the source location. LinkFixer Advanced will also now remove empty folders in the source location, during the Move/Rename process, even if those folders were not emptied by LinkFixer Advanced during the Move/Rename process.

LinkFixer Advanced can now process extremely large quantities of sub-folders (over 20 million) in a single parent folder. A bug was fixed that previously caused an “Out of Memory” exception when tried to process a single parent folder with over 1 million sub-folders and files.

The CSV reports produced by LinkFixer Advanced will now always be manageable in size. The reporting function has been enhanced to automatically split CSV reports into separate files of a size that you select. Previously, these reports could sometimes become so large that Microsoft Excel could not open them.

You no longer need to worry about installing a PDF viewer on your server in order to view LinkFixer Advanced reports. You can now open its reports and the LinkFixer Advanced user’s guide using its own PDF viewer. This is useful when LinkFixer Advanced is installed on a server or other computer that does not already have a PDF viewer installed. LinkFixer Advanced checks for a previously installed PDF viewer before launching its own PDF viewer.

You will now be able to know the level of importance of LinkFixer Advanced updates before you install them. We have enhanced LinkFixer Advanced’s update system to classify updates as “Required”, “Critical”, “Important”, “Recommended” and “Optional”. We also now provide a preview of the features and fixes included in the update.

Your custom SharePoint “Last Modified” fields can now be written only once and are subsequently “read-only”. A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously allowed LinkFixer Advanced custom “Last Modified” fields to be overwritten when and if a subsequent LinkFixer Advanced process was run on the same files.

When running multiples instances of LinkFixer Advanced, you can now instruct the scanning portion of Cure to pause to allow all other instances to also complete their Scan step before your cure process begins. This ensures that LinkFixer Advanced has all of the data, about all of your files, from all of your instances, before it begins to Cure your links. A user interface setting has been added to the “Options | General” screen that allows you to instruct LinkFixer Advanced to pause after the cure scan.

A bug was fixed that had previously misidentified some text files as video media files, and mistakenly added a linkID to those files during the Inoculate process. These text files are now correctly identified and a repair utility was added to LinkFixer Advanced that will remove the linkIDs from any affected text files.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously caused some types of files to not be able to be previewed in OpenText Enterprise Connect after being inoculated by LinkFixer Advanced.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused the Cure process to stop during the Scan portion of the process if the license link limit was reached during the scan. LinkFixer Advanced now counts links against the license link limit only when a link is cured during the Cure portion of the process.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously prevented links in a file from being fixed during the Move/Rename process in cases where LinkFixer Advanced was not able to set the file’s permissions after the file was moved or renamed.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously caused Move/Rename statistics to be incorrect if any files were skipped during the Move/Rename process.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously left some files in SharePoint after the Move/Rename process was supposed to move them from SharePoint to the user’s local C:\ drive.

All “Tooltips” are back. A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously prevented “tooltips” from displaying on the “Select Files” screens of all processes.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously caused Cure to abort in some cases where the license link limitation was reached prematurely. Links now count toward the link limit only when the applicable process has been successfully accomplished.

The architecture of the LinkFixer Advanced error module has been enhanced to enable the creation of error messages containing more details and diagnostic intelligence.

Microsoft .NET version 4.6.1 will no longer attempt to install when version 4.6.2 is present on your computer. This issue made LinkFixer Advanced’s install to be confusing as it seemed to communicate that LinkFixer Advanced had fail to install.

Windows 7 operating system or higher is now required in order to install LinkFixer Advanced.

Copyright notices have been updated in reports, file metadata and the splash screen.

Additionally, copyright notices have been updated in source files, installers and the LinkFixer Advanced “About” screen.

• 3.4.0 (29 August 2016)

LinkFixer Advanced now processes files and links significantly faster. In some benchmark tests, the speed increase averaged over 500%, compared with the previous most-recent version of LinkFixer Advanced. We did this by upgrading the method of writing links to the SQL Server database. Data storage structures within the database were revised to improve efficiency. And, the logic used when LinkFixer Advanced controls the multiple threads (“Agents”) was also improved significantly to process files more efficiently.

LinkFixer Advanced can fully handle your MicroStation reference files now. In the past, there were some reference files that LinkFixer Advanced didn’t “see”. That is remedied in this new release. Here are the details: The MicroStation plug-in was rewritten to recognize and use variables in link (reference) paths. LinkFixer Advanced can also now modify links paths in both of the storage locations within DGN files (instead of only the location that stores the absolute link path).

LinkFixer Advanced’s Microsoft Excel plug-in can now find and process links in more places automatically. We’ve enhanced the Microsoft Excel handler to access links that point to files located in Excel startup and library folders. These links were previously shown as “inaccessible”. That is remedied in this new release.

In our continuous efforts of improving performance and user experience, LinkFixer Advanced has been upgraded to use the latest versions of .NET framework, SQLite and DevExpress. All three of these third-party tools are very important to the operation of LinkFixer Advanced. New version numbers:

• .Net Framework 4.6.1
• SQLite version 5.6.687
• DevExpress 16.1.4

Further on our efforts of improving user experience, LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to include more warnings. Details follow:

The SQLite database that comes free with LinkFixer Advanced is a fantastic tool when running small sets of files for smaller projects, or when running our sample files when becoming familiar with the tool. However, if you’d like to run it on larger sets of files, specifically, 100,000 files or more, it is recommended that you switch to a full SQL Server to experience LinkFixer Advanced’s true performance! With release 3.4.0 and beyond, if you point LinkFixer Advanced to a dataset that’s 100,000 files or larger and you have not switched to a full SQL Server, upon firing up LinkFixer Advanced, it will now warn you that performance will be much slower if you do not switch to a full SQL Server, and you’ll be given instructions on how to do so.

LinkFixer Advanced will now warn you if you configure SQL Server with a database schema other than the default “dbo” schema.

LinkFixer Advanced now includes a file system and network diagnostic utility. This utility is a separate executable that gets shipped with LinkFixer Advanced to help our developers diagnose the source of any network or storage issues that could be slowing down the operation of LinkFixer Advanced. This utility does not run automatically.

LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to render graphics more reliably when it is being run on a virtual or remote computer using a remote desktop connection. To accomplish this, LinkFixer Advanced now uses software graphics rendering by default (instead of hardware rendering).

AutoCAD users, LinkFixer Advanced will now recognize and process your links that point to underlay layer files (PDF, DWG, DWF, and DGN). We have enhanced LinkFixer Advanced to recognize this type of link and process it like any other link in AutoCAD files.

Relative links now maintain their relative format when the “Convert mapped drives to UNC” rename rule is used. A bug was fixed that had previously incorrectly applied the “Convert mapped drives to UNC” rename rule to relative links in addition to links in the “mapped drive” format.

LinkFixer Advanced’s “Finishing” rules are now only applied to links that have been modified by the main rename rules. A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously applied “finishing” rename rules to all links, regardless of whether or not these links had been modified by the main rename rule or rules. These “finishing” rules instruct LinkFixer Advanced to leave links in a specific format, such as “absolute”, “relative”, “UNC”, etc., after the links have been modified by the main rename rules.

Links are now only modified in the parent file if LinkFixer Advanced has confirmed that the child file was successfully moved or renamed. A LinkFixer Advanced bug in the Move/Rename process was fixed that previously modified links in some parent files, even when the child file, pointed to by a link, was not successfully moved/renamed for any reason.

Legacy LiveLink files without file extensions, contained in OpenText Content Server, can now be inoculated and cured successfully by LinkFixer Advanced. A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously removed the MIME type information from these files during the Inoculate process. This caused the subsequent curing of these files in a new location to fail. The MIME type of files can now optionally be determined and added to the metadata of files when LinkFixer Advanced processes them.

LinkFixer Advanced can now process files with names containing square brackets. A bug was fixed that previously prevented processing files with these characters.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug in the Modify Links preview was handled where in some rare occasions, some links that were supposed to be modified to “mapped drive” link format were converted instead to UNC link format. This bug was fixed in this release.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously sometimes caused local drives to be presented on the “Network Locations” screen as though they were mapped drives to network locations.

A bug was fixed in the Microsoft Access file handler that previously caused some Access links to not be modified.

1. 3.3.0 (20 May 2016)

You can now accomplish more with a single processing “pass” through your data when using LinkFixer Advanced. We have added “finishing” options to the Inoculate and Cure processes that will now allow you to specify how you want all of your links formatted when the process is complete. For example, you can specify that all links be “finished” by making them all relative, absolute or upper case. In many cases, this new feature will save you time by reducing the number of LinkFixer Advanced processes that need to be run to accomplish your project.

You now have much more information available to you when LinkFixer Advanced is running a process. The “progress box” has been completely redesigned and expanded into a “progress page”. This page now contains real-time alerts about critical issues, disk space and database space monitoring, real-time file and link processing statistics and graphs, an elapsed time indicator, calculations of the numbers of files and links being processed per minute by LinkFixer Advanced, and other information.

LinkFixer Advanced will now warn you in advance about several important potential issues before they have a chance to occur. LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to automatically check the amount of available RAM, the increment by which the SQL Server database is set to auto-grow, whether you have selected to process files that reside on a Novell volume and whether you have selected to process more than the recommended number of files using the SQLite database. If any of these are outside the required or recommended parameters, LinkFixer Advanced will warn you about the situation when you click the {Run} button for any process. This new functionality will help LinkFixer Advanced apply the old adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

You are now less likely to accidentally clear (or fail to clear) the LinkFixer Advanced database when running a process. Whether the database will be cleared is now controlled by an obvious checkbox on the Options screen of each process. Additionally, when that option is enabled and you click the {Run} button, a popup box asks whether you really intend to clear the database.

You can now access your SharePoint Online server using “Federated” authentication. LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to support this form of “claims based” authentication.

You can now access your OpenText server using SSL. LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to support connections using HTTPS.

You can now choose to receive email notifications from LinkFixer Advanced when it finishes a process or encounters an error during processing. You can also choose the level of issue severity about which you wish to be notified.

LinkFixer Advanced reports are now more informative. A “Critical Alerts” section has been added to the Summary Report to summarize and communicate the most important issues that occurred during the LinkFixer Advanced process that just ran.

New users should find LinkFixer Advanced easier to understand and use. The “Options” screens for all of the processes have been revised, updated and simplified so as to be clearer and more intuitive.

You will spend far less time inoculating new and changed files in data sets that have previously been inoculated. The LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate process now has the ability to perform an “incremental” inoculation that processes only files and links that are new or changed since the previous inoculation.

Support for running multiple instances of LinkFixer Advanced at the same time has been enhanced with improved coordination between instances. LinkFixer Advanced now logs and tracks each instance connected to the database at startup and when a process is started. Safety features have been added that make it much more difficult for one instance to accidentally erase or corrupt data that was added by another instance.

The Microsoft Excel plug-in was enhanced to recognize and process macro links that are activated by clicking on buttons in XLSM files.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused processing to be aborted when a certain type of “transport-level” disconnection occurred between LinkFixer Advanced and the SQL Server. LinkFixer Advanced will now recover from this type of error, attempt to reconnect to the SQL Server and continue processing files if the connection can be reestablished.

A bug was fixed that previously caused the Agent Manager in LinkFixer Advanced to occasionally fail to restart an agent process that had been either intentionally or unintentionally stopped due to file corruption or some other critical issue. This bug, which caused LinkFixer Advanced to occasionally “hang”, has now been fixed.

A bug in the Microsoft Excel plug-in was fixed that caused an exception when links containing certain types of macros in XLSM files were processed. The Excel plug-in was also enhanced to recognize and process several new types of expressions containing links within VBA macro code.

The Microsoft Excel plug-in has been enhanced to provide full Unicode support for links in XLS files.

The Microsoft Excel plug-in was enhanced to be able to work around a known Microsoft issue that arises when attempting to modify a relative link to point to a location closer to the root of the file system than the directory of the parent file in which the link is located.

A bug in the Microsoft Excel plug-in was fixed that previously caused the Last Modified time to not be preserved for Excel files containing VBA macros.

A bug was fixed in the Microsoft Access plug-in that had previously caused some MDB and ACCDB files to be processed very slowly. LinkFixer Advanced now scans only user-defined tables and does not scan “linked tables” to external files. This improved the processing speed dramatically.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that had occasionally caused files copied to SharePoint Online to not be cured.

A bug was fixed that previously caused LinkFixer Advanced to report “no links to cure” in some circumstances where broken links were actually available to cure.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had prevented file and link filters from being applied when generating reports from the Reports tab.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had occasionally caused the Inoculate process to hang during processing due to a SQL deadlock.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously prevented any links that contained invalid linkIDs from automatically being reassigned valid IDs during a re-inoculation of those files.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that caused active LinkFixer Advanced agents to operate using the default settings file, even though the user had specified a different settings file.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that caused file filters set by the user to be ignored during the scan portion of the Cure process. As a result, the Cure process was taking longer than necessary to complete.

1. 3.2.0 (22 January 2016)

The LinkFixer Advanced Cure process is now easier to use. It is no longer necessary to select the locations of the parent and child files on separate wizard screens, and you no longer need to specify whether the files were copied versus moved. You can now cure your files simply by selecting the parent and child file locations on a single wizard screen. No other settings or switches are necessary.

The Microsoft Access plug-in can also now find and fix links contained in plain text streams located in any column of an Access table. (Previously, links in Access files could only be found and processed if they were located in a column specifically identified as containing links.)

The AutoCAD plug-in can now recognize and handle files in AutoCAD 2015 and 2016 file formats.

The InDesign plug-in can now recognize and handle Adobe InDesign files in the Creative Cloud file formats.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to show the link-type matrix on all Summary reports (instead of only the Scan Summary). The matrix itself is easier to use because it now reports file types (instead of every single file extension). A bug was also fixed that previously had caused the numbers reported in the file-type matrix to occasionally be inaccurate.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that occasionally had caused corruption of some JPG image files during the Inoculate process. This issue occurred only when large numbers of image files were processed concurrently and has now been fixed.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously caused database deadlocks while deleting entries from the ErrorLog table under certain circumstances.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused links in SharePoint Online to be reported and handled as ordinary web links in the case where the child files did not exist in the file selection.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that was previously removing milliseconds in the “last modified” timestamp of files, due to database inaccuracy. LinkFixer Advanced now restores the original file time accurately to the millisecond.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that cause links to not be fixed by the Move/Rename process in the case where child files were moved or renamed but parent files containing links to those child files remained in the same location.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that previously caused SharePoint to report ASPX system files as corrupt after being inoculated by LinkFixer Advanced. LinkFixer Advanced now skips and does not process any system folders or files in SharePoint by default.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously prevented the Modify Links process from changing OLE links in Microsoft Office files to “relative” or “absolute” link formats.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously handled incorrectly some file and link paths that contained question marks. These file and link paths are now handled correctly.

A bug was fixed in the Microsoft Excel plug-in that had previously caused “Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.“ to be added to the beginning of “connection” links (containing the data required to connect to, and retrieve data from, a database) in Excel files during the Cure process. (This behavior is correct for most other links in Excel files, but would be incorrect for connection links.) These links are now correctly handled by LinkFixer Advanced.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused link filters, selected by users in the “Select Links” screen of the Inoculate process, to be ignored. Link filters now work correctly.

Three bugs were fixed in the Microsoft Shortcut (LNK) plug-in. “Last Modified” timestamps of shortcut files were previously not being maintained. Shortcuts to locations with long file paths were previously not supported. Previously, inoculated shortcuts were reported as “not inoculated” after a rescan. All three of these bugs have been fixed.

1. 3.1.0 (4 September 2015)

Do you prefer to copy your files when doing a migration (instead of just moving them)? Well now LinkFixer Advanced can cure all the links in files that you copied to the new location, with no extra steps required on your part. Previously, LinkFixer Advanced would not Cure files that were copied to a new location, because copying usually does not break the links in parent files, thereby causing LinkFixer Advanced to see all the links as still “healthy”. With this new release, the LinkFixer Advanced Cure function can, in essence, recognize that your files were copied and fix the links to point to the child files in their new location.

The LinkFixer Advanced LNK, ASPX, CSS, HTML and JS plug-ins have been completely rewritten. The new file handlers will process your files an average of approximately 2.5 times faster, and are more efficient and robust than the previous plug-ins.

LinkFixer Advanced is now completely compatible with SharePoint Online. LinkFixer Advanced’s ability to use your SharePoint Online credentials to log in to SharePoint Online has been enhanced. Previously, only a limited set of LinkFixer Advanced features were available in SharePoint Online.

The LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate process just got faster. The speed of the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate process was improved by a new method of processing unrecognized, unsupported and locked files. These files are now inoculated 3.5 times faster than in previous versions, in part because LinkFixer Advanced is no longer required to make a temporary local copies of the files in order to process them.

LinkFixer Advanced scans Visio files about 4 times faster than the previous version. Users will love this scanning speed increase. For any  users who love to know how things are done: This speed increase is due to changing the scanning function such that it can determine the file types without having to make a temporary local copy of each file, as was previously required.

You now have better control over versions in SharePoint. LinkFixer Advanced’s compatibility with Microsoft SharePoint has been enhanced with the ability to create either a “major” version or “minor” version when LinkFixer Advanced modifies files in SharePoint. Previously, LinkFixer Advanced was able to create only a “major” version (such as incrementing from version 1.0 of a file to version 2.0). LinkFixer Advanced is now able to detect the user’s version setting in SharePoint, and to create the appropriate type of new version automatically, based on that user setting. So, for example, if the user setting in SharePoint is set to create “major and minor” versions, LinkFixer Advanced will increment the version number from 2.0 to 2.1 (instead of only incrementing from 2.0 to 3.0).

You are no longer required to turn off “Require Content Approval” before processing files in SharePoint. LinkFixer Advanced’s compatibility with Microsoft SharePoint has been enhanced with the ability to modify files in a SharePoint library when the “Require Content Approval” setting is enabled. LinkFixer Advanced is now able to automatically disable this setting before processing a file, and re-enable the setting when processing is complete.

LinkFixer Advanced is compatible now with SharePoint Web Apps. The links contained in some files that were moved out of SharePoint with Web Apps, and some files moved within SharePoint, would be automatically fixed by Web Apps and SharePoint. These changes to the link paths had previously caused the links to appear to LinkFixer Advanced to no longer be inoculated. This prevented LinkFixer Advanced from being able to Cure the links if they were subsequently moved to a different location. This is fixed. LinkFixer Advanced is now able to track these links (and their linkIDs) even if Web Apps or SharePoint modifies the links.

Processing large SharePoint sites is now faster. LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to processes Microsoft SharePoint sites more quickly and efficiently by automatically skipping SharePoint system folders and files. Skipping these system folders and files allows LinkFixer Advanced to process your sites faster. By default, LinkFixer Advanced now skips the “Forms”, “_catalogs”, “_cts” and “_private” folders, and all ASPX parent files it finds in SharePoint libraries.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously had caused some child files in SharePoint to be incorrectly reported as not containing a fileID, when SharePoint document IDs were in use. This bug was fixed by adding the ability to retrieve a SharePoint child file’s full URL path using its SharePoint document ID, without requiring the file to be rescanned.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed in the function that preserves the “last modified by” and “last modified date” information about files moved by LinkFixer Advanced into SharePoint. The point of this feature is to preserve the “last-modified” data that the file had before it got moved to SharePoint. Without our custom fields to store that data, SharePoint immediately changes the last-modified data to the current date and user at the instant the file goes into SharePoint. The bug here was that data from within, instead of from outside SharePoint, was previously preserved. This information about the files, prior to their entry into SharePoint, is now correctly saved to the corresponding custom fields in SharePoint.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously sometimes caused individual threads (“agents”) of the LinkFixer Advanced multi-threading capability to hang when network locations were found to be unavailable.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that sometimes previously caused SharePoint mapped drives to not be detected. SharePoint mapped locations that previously did not appear in the LinkFixer Advanced “Network Locations” tab and folder selections screens are now recognized and displayed.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously stored invalid mapped drive information in the LinkFixer Advanced settings file. This bug caused delays in LinkFixer Advanced processing while invalid drives were searched for. These delays have now been eliminated.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously did not allow processing of links containing French accented characters. Files that were previously not processed are now processed successfully.

The “Preview Links to be Cured” screen now presents accurate data. A bug in LinkFixer Advanced Cure Preview screen was fixed that had previously provided an incorrect count of files and links available to be Cured. LinkFixer Advanced now presents a preview of every link that exists in each of the parent files it shows on the Preview screen. It also now continues to scan files until it either finds all available files and links to be cured, or until the user-selected number of links has been found.

LinkFixer Advanced now recognizes “+” symbols in file paths. A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that prevented files with “+” symbols in the file path from being processed. Files with this symbol are now processed and reported correctly.

LinkFixer Advanced is now tolerant of multiple file extensions that are part of the same file name. A bug was fixed that had previously caused LinkFixer Advanced to not correctly process files that contained more than one file extension. For example, the file “\folder\sample.xls.xlsx” would not have been processed. Multiple extensions are now correctly handled.

The modified date of SharePoint files that contain no links is now preserved. A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused files with no links to appear to have been modified, even though the file contained no links to modify. These files now retain their Last Modified date in SharePoint when processed by the LinkFixer Advanced Modify Links process.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously caused file filters to be inconsistently applied at different levels of the selected folder structure. This resulted in files being scanned that should have been filtered out of the Scan selection. This File Filter selection now works correctly.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that occasionally caused folder browser selections to be cleared when folders were collapsed and expanded. User selections in folder selection screens are now correctly preserved when the user makes changes to the selection screen or moves to other wizard screens.

1. 3.0.0 (19 June 2015)

LinkFixer Advanced will now process your files, and complete your project, up to three times faster. We have added the ability to process multiple parent files at the same time, through the use of multiple “threads” in the Windows operating system. This will allow you to complete large projects faster, while using fewer instances of LinkFixer Advanced. LinkFixer Advanced determines how many files to process at the same time based on the number of processors it detects in the computer on which it is installed. So, you don’t need to calculate or configure anything to benefit from this new capability.

The LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate, Move/Rename and Modify Links processes can now be completed in about half the time they have previously taken. Instead of requiring two separate steps — for example, Scan and Inoculate — Scan can now be done at the same time as the Inoculate, Move/Rename or Modify Links function, in a single step. This will allow you to complete your project faster, with less interruption for your end users.

LinkFixer Advanced reports are now easier for you to understand and use. We have enhanced the layout of the PDF “Summary” reports for each of the processes, to give you additional statistics, summarize warnings and errors, and to be more concise. The Comma Separated Value (CSV) data file has been split into three files — one for files that were skipped (not processed for some reason), one for the files that were processed normally, and another for the files that generated a warning or error when processed. So, now you can easily find exactly the type of information you need — Summary, Skipped, Details or Exceptions.

You will find yourself spending much less time waiting for the previews of the LinkFixer Advanced Inoculate and Cure processes to be generated. Previously, all selected files needed to be scanned before a preview could be presented. This procedure has been enhanced so that the preview is now presented after a maximum of 1,000 links have been scanned. Now you will get a preview right away, even if you are processing millions of files.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused an error when a user would click on the Network Locations tab, but no Network Places or drive letters had been previously been mapped in Windows to display.

A bug in the Microsoft Excel plug-in was fixed that occasionally caused an access violation exception while loading a file.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that occasionally caused LinkFixer Advanced to “hang” for ten minutes at the end of a function. This error only occurred when the last file processed during a task was corrupt and causes the LinkFixer Agent process to be restarted. LinkFixer Advanced now recognizes this unusual situation and continues without pausing.

A memory leak (bug) that affected all of the Microsoft Office file-type plug-ins was eliminated.

A bug in the LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that had previously caused the Modify Links process to fail if the “Match slash orientation” setting in the rename rule was enabled.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused Modify Links to report that some links were modified when they were not. This issue occurred when a file that contained Unicode characters was rewritten to a temp location and then could not be copied back to the original location. This caused changes to the file to be lost.

1. 2.4.0 (4 December 2014)

LinkFixer Advanced now processes files about 50% faster. LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a faster method of controlling the file-type plug-ins and the files they process. This eliminates the need for a slower subsystem that previously controlled the plug-ins and produces reductions in processing times of approximately one third.

LinkFixer Advanced users will no longer need to compress and upload huge log files when they are requested by LinkTek Support. We have found a way to improve your user experience, while saving you some time. LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a new “automatic” log level that logs a minimum of information when files are processed normally. If an exception or error occurs, detailed (“verbose”) log information is written to the log file, to assist the developers in diagnosing the issue. LinkFixer Advanced now produces smaller log files and processes files and links faster than was previously possible with “verbose” logging enabled. “Automatic” is now the default log level for LinkFixer Advanced.

The trial version of LinkFixer Advanced is now more useful than ever. The trial version can now scan and report on up to 100 GB or 100,000 files in a single run. Trial users can also process up to 500 links per day using each of the other LinkFixer Advanced processes (Inoculate, Cure, Move/Rename and Modify Links), and up to a total of 5,000 links per function during the course of the 21-day free trial.

If you have multiple instances of LinkFixer Advanced connected to a single SQL database, you can now pause each instance after the scan step of Cure, before the Cure process begins. This will allow all of your instances to complete the scan step before any instance begins curing links. LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with this “pause” option specifically to help users who are processing very large file sets using multiple instances of LinkFixer Advanced at the same time.

Future releases of LinkFixer Advanced can now be released more often, after being tested more thoroughly. A new LinkFixer Advanced testing program has been created for internal use in testing new builds and releases. This program allows for faster and more thorough automatic testing of a large variety of different link types, in and between many different local and network locations.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that had previously caused a subset of Microsoft Office files to present an error message when opened by the Office application after being Inoculated by LinkFixer Advanced. This issue effected only newer (XLM) Office files that were simultaneously a parent file and a child file, and only when the file was processed as a child file prior to being processed as a parent file.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had caused a Windows exception message to be displayed when the “LinkFixer Agent” process was restarted in the course of its normal operation.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had previously prevented files from being moved from OpenText to the local drive using the Move/Rename process.

We can now process links in your DOC and DOCX files that have the # symbol in them. A bug in the Microsoft Word plug-in was fixed that had previously dropped the “#” symbol from links in DOC and DOCX files. LinkFixer Advanced now recognizes and preserves these “bookmark” symbols, and processes these links correctly.

A bug in the Microsoft Word plug-in was fixed that had previously caused some DOCX files to be reported as corrupt by Word after being inoculated by LinkFixer Advanced. This bug effected only files containing multiple links to the same child file, and when those links were stored in more than one format (such as “relative”, “absolute” or UNC) within the same file.

A bug in the Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in was fixed that had previously caused the some PPTX presentations to appear to be corrupted by the Modify Links process. This caused some lines of text that were on separate lines in the “before” file to be contained in a single line in the “after” file.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that had previously caused some files to not be processed because the temp file created and used by LinkFixer Advanced to rewrite files would become locked. LinkFixer Advanced now uses a different method to identify temp files, to prevent this locked-file issue in the future.

Bugs in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint plug-ins were fixed that had previously caused the link text of links in XLSX and PPTX file to not be modified when the link text matched the link path.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that had caused spaces in HTML files to be encoded (changed to “%20”) twice when the files were processed by the Move/Rename process while moving the files out of SharePoint.

A bug was fixed in the Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in that previously prevented some PPTM files from being loaded and processed.

A bug was fixed in the Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in that had previously caused links in PPT files that had been processed by the Modify Links process to revert to the previous link path when the link was clicked in PowerPoint “Presentation Mode”.

The Microsoft Excel plug-in was enhanced to be more tolerant of non-standard macros when loading XLS. These non-standard macros had caused LinkFixer Advanced to record an error in the logs, and to stop processing the file. Such files are now successfully processed.

A bug in the Microsoft Word plug-in was fixed so that hyperlinks located within fields in DOC files now load and are processed correctly.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously caused relative links to be incorrectly reported as absolute on the Cure Report.

1. 2.3.0 (23 September 2014)

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused LinkFixer Advanced to hang when attempting to open certain corrupt files. A time-out was added to cause LinkFixer Advanced to skip any file that takes more than a certain amount of time to open. This time-out period is configurable in the “LinkFixer User Settings” file.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to add support for links pointing to resource types sftp://, ssh://, svn://, and res://. Such links cannot be validated during the Scan process, and cannot be Inoculated or Cured, but can be modified by the Move/Rename process or Modify Links.

Technical: All file-type plug-ins now require that an unlock key be passed to them by the licensing module in order to operate. All plug-ins now return an error if they receive input instructions without first being unlocked.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to update hyperlink text when the underlying link is contained in the hyperlink text. Previously, LinkFixer Advanced required that the hyperlink text exactly match the underlying link. This function has also been enhanced to make it more tolerant of leading and trailing spaces, trailing punctuation, and the trailing slashes that are often added automatically to links by Microsoft Office applications.

A Microsoft Excel plug-in bug was fixed that previously caused XLS files modified by the Modify Links process, using the option “Update hyperlink text when the hyperlink is changed, regardless of whether hyperlink text is the same as the hyperlink path”, to report errors when the files were subsequently opened by the Excel application. Such links are now processed correctly.

A bug in Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in was fixed that prevented the Modify Links process from updating the hyperlink text when it was the same as the link path. A related bug was also fixed that prevented the Modify Links process from updating the link path unless it was the same as the hyperlink text.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously caused some types of Excel (XLSB) and PowerPoint (PPTX) files to be reported as unsupported zipped (PKZ) files. These file types are now recognized, processed and reported correctly.

A bug in the Microsoft Excel file handler was fixed that previously caused many (non-existent) “invalid links” to be reported for a specific XLSX file. The unusual file structure of this type of file is now correctly recognized and the non-existent links are no longer reported.

A bug in the Microsoft Excel file handler was fixed that prevented links from an XLS file to an MDB file, containing both a connection string and a command string, from being processed. Such files are now recognized, processed and reported correctly.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that caused successive scans to show an inconsistent number of links in a specific XLSX file.

A bug was fixed that caused LinkFixer Advanced to attempt to validate links with the forms \\www.???.com and \\abc.???.com, even though the user option to “Check external links pointing to Web-based files” was disabled.

LinkFixer Advanced Full Scan and Incremental Scan CSV reports were enhanced to include a count of links that have not changed since the last scan. The associated PDF reports were also enhanced to include the following new statistics: “Files not changed since last scan” and “Links not changed since last scan”.

The statistics section of LinkFixer Advanced Scan reports was enhanced to hide from the report any sub-categories of “skipped links” that contain zero entries. Now, only non-zero sub-categories are shown on the report.

A bug in the statistics section of LinkFixer Advanced Scan reports was fixed that previously showed the value “-1” for the category “Files with no broken links”.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that caused “mailto:” links to be reported with the error “cannot be modified due to an illegal character”, even though the links were correctly modified, and the “after” link on the report showed the correct modified link path.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that caused the Modify Links “Preview Matching Links” and “Preview Links to be Modified” screens to not show any links available for processing when only the “files” node was selected in the “Select Parent Files” screen. This error would not appear if the entire parent folder was selected, or if any sub-folders were selected along with the files in the folder. This has been fixed and the previews now operate correctly.

1. 2.2.4 (5 August 2014)

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that previously caused password-protected XLSM files to be incorrectly reported as an unsupported file type “OLECF”. These files are now correctly reported as “password protected”.

The Microsoft Word plug-in was fixed to correctly recognize and process certain types of links contained in VBA macros that were previously not recognized or processed. So, more of the links in your VBA macros will now be processed by LinkFixer Advanced.

A bug in the Microsoft Word plug-in was fixed that caused links in some older DOC files to be re-written with an empty link path when the link was changed to its relative path by the Modify Links process. Such links are now processed correctly. If you had trouble with some links that were forced relative by the Modify Links process in DOC files, this new version fixes that issue.

A bug was fixed in the Microsoft Word plug-in that caused internal links in DOC files to be reported as links, but with an empty link path. These links are now correctly skipped and reported as skipped. This will get rid of “phantom” links in the scan report of DOC files containing bookmarks.

The Microsoft Word plug-in was fixed so that DOCX files containing multiple instances of the same link no longer present an error when opened after being inoculated. This type of file is now processed correctly. If Word reported some of your DOCX files as corrupt after being inoculated, this update will solve the problem.

Technical: The internal architecture of LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced to improve processing efficiency and speed. These changes also make it possible to further enhance LinkFixer Advanced in the future to run multiple processing “threads” at the same time, which will result in further improvements in processing efficiency and speed.

1. 2.2.3 (16 July 2014)

LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced with an option to “Hide Broken Links” in the set-up screen for Regular reports. Some users want to create a report that shows only links that are valid (working). This ability to show only valid links in the report was not previously available but is available now.

LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced with the ability to automatically refresh and recognize the online status of newly added or removed network locations while LFA is running. Now, if you map a drive in Windows Explorer while LinkFixer Advanced is open, the new mapped drive will be automatically recognized and added to the Network Locations in LinkFixer Advanced. A manual refresh was previously required to accomplish this function.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that prevented links containing bookmark data from being converted to relative paths using the Modify Links process.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to handle a bug that sometimes prevented file selection data from being correctly updated and used when running a process such as Scan.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that caused an exception at startup when the user settings file was missing.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced Cure process was fixed that had caused an incorrect selection of parent files to be scanned in certain circumstances. This occasionally resulted in the LinkFixer Advanced database containing incorrect or missing records.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that had caused the “Process Broken Links” and “Process Non-Broken Links” Expert Options settings for the Modify Links process to revert to their default state (enabled) after being changed by the user. These settings now persist after LinkFixer Advanced is closed. This means you no longer need to change these settings every time you run the Modify Links process (if you need or want to disable these settings).

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to eliminate an error that occurred when users attempted to use Modify Links to change links pointing to folders. Links in files usually point to other files, but in some cases can point to folder locations. Such links to folder locations were previously not processed correctly. Links to folders are now modified as expected according to the active rename rules.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that previously prohibited relative links containing a colon in the file path from being processed.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to eliminate a bug that caused Move/Rename process to fail when moving files directly from OpenText to SharePoint.

The JavaScript plug-in was fixed to eliminate a bug that had caused the Inoculate process to run very slowly when processing JavaScript files with a specific internal structure.

Technical: To correct a prior design decision, all of the newly-rewritten LinkFixer Advanced file type handlers have now been modified to operate under the LinkFixer Advanced Service module (crash prevention software). This was done largely as a precaution after it was discovered that some .NET processes can generate “out-of-memory” exceptions, even though they are running under the control of .NET memory management platform. LinkFixer Advanced legacy file type plug-ins have long operated under this LFA Service module to guard against errors resulting from file and memory corruption.

1. 2.2.2 (30 May 2014)

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with new plug-in for scanning and modifying links in databases in SQL Servers.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a new setting that allows users to move files, using the Move/Rename process, without modifying the links in the moved parent files.

The MicroStation plug-in was enhanced with the ability to modify OLE links in DGN parent files pointing to SharePoint locations, and OLE links to locations with UNC paths.

The Microsoft Excel plug-in was fixed to eliminate a bug that was causing a LinkFixer Advanced sub-system (LFPRW) to restart unnecessarily when processing some XLS files.

The bug in the Microsoft Word plug-in was fixed that was causing some links to not be visible to LinkFixer Advanced after applying “Force mapped drive to UNC” to DOC files located on a mapped drive.

The Microsoft Access plug-in was fixed to eliminate a bug that was causing links in MDB files to lose their inoculation (linkID) after links were forced absolute.

Microsoft Access plug-in was fixed to automatically prepend “..” on any Access link paths that begin with only a backslash (“\”). This bug was causing these links in ACCDB files to be reported as broken when they were actually valid.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that caused links to not be modified when files were moved to a mapped drive using the Move/Rename process.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that was causing PDF parent files located on mapped drives and containing UNC links to not be inoculated.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to eliminate a bug that caused links in XLSX parent files to not be modified to the expected new path when the parent files were moved using the Move/Rename process.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that caused links pointing to folders to not be fixed when using the Modify Links function.

The LinkFixer Advanced Scan Report was enhanced to split the “(None)” child file extension, in the File Type matrix at the end of the report, into several distinct categories. This improves that clarity of the data in the File Type matrix.

1. 2.2.1 (30 April 2014)

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to be able to read files that have been opened by users without an exclusive lock. Note that such files still cannot be inoculated, cured or modified while open.

The LinkFixer Advanced Scan process wizard was enhanced to include a preview of files to be scanned. This allows users who apply file filters to the Scan process to preview the effects of their filters before running the process.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to support additional Microsoft Office XML file types (2007–2013 versions) that have macros that are contained in binary files. New file types added are XLTM, XLAM, XLSB, PPAM, POTM, PPSM. These are in addition to the DOCM, XLSM and PPTM file types that were previously handled.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to recognize, parse and modify links to ProjectWise files (links prefaced with pw://). Links to ProjectWise child files cannot yet be validated, inoculated or cured, however.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to show and process hidden files along with other file types. One practical use of this enhancement is the ability to process shortcuts stored in hidden folders.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that caused expert file and link filtering rules to not get saved and subsequently restored.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that had caused the grids in the “Process files [links] matching filters that are different for each folder” to not get updated when folder selections were changed.

1. 2.2.0 (11 April 2014)

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to add support for SharePoint 2003.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to add support for OpenText.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a new faster method of determining the file type of parent and child files during the Scan process. Additionally, over 50 new file types are now recognized.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to connect to SQL Server databases (including SQL Express). This improves the performance of LinkFixer Advanced when processing large file sets.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with faster, rewritten plug-ins for the DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, JPG, BMP, TIF and GIF file types. This increases dramatically the processing speed for these file types and produces a general improvement in processing speed for file sets containing a mix of these and other file types.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to comply with existing group policy registry settings that disable browsing of the network by users with restricted permissions. LinkFixer Advanced previously showed all available network servers and shares, even if the logged-on user did not have permission to access those resources.

LinkFixer Advanced has been enhanced with new file handlers for 15 media file types: MP4, M4V, MOV, AVI, CDA, QCP, RMI, WAV, ASF, WMA, WMV, MKV, FLAC, MP3 and M4A. These new file handlers dramatically increase the speed with which the Inoculate and Cure can process these media file types.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a new plug-in to process PNG graphics files as a supported child file type.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to Move/Rename or Cure files directly from SharePoint to OpenText while automatically fixing links.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with improved detection of online and offline network locations. LinkFixer Advanced now “remembers” network locations that are not accessible and does not waste time re-checking locations that cannot be reached. This improves processing speed for files that contain links to inaccessible locations.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to allow users to choose to install the software either for a single user or for all users of the computer, during the installation process.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to be tolerant of leading and trailing spaces in link paths contained in parent files. Such files previously could not be processed and resulted in an error message.

All Microsoft Office plug-ins were fixed to be tolerant of encoded special characters in link paths. Links containing these characters were previously not modified as expected.

DGN (MicroStation) plug-in was enhanced to recognize and process OLE links to Microsoft Office files. OLE links in MicroStation files were previously not supported.

DGN (MicroStation) plug-in was fixed to add support for files containing internal links to references within the parent DGN file itself. These internal references were previously not detected or handled.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to write custom fields to SharePoint to retain an item’s “modified” timestamp and “modified by” user name when requested by the user.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to support caching an item’s metadata to improve performance when processing SharePoint sites.

A bug in the LinkFixer Advanced progress indicator screen was fixed to correctly reflect activity while updating the database. This bug cause LinkFixer Advanced to appear to “hang” (stop responding) when a large number of database updates were occurring.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that OpenText links are now categorized as broken and non-broken links in the dashboard. These links were previously not reported in the dashboard statistics.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to be able to resolve and modify relative links in files within OpenText. Such relative links previously could not be resolved.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to use multiple simultaneous threads to retrieve DocumentIDs from SharePoint. This reduces the time required to scan files in SharePoint.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that was causing some child files in SharePoint to not appear on Scan reports.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that was causing files and links that were correctly modified in the Move/Rename process to not be shown on the Rename Report.

A bug was fixed in LinkFixer Advanced that was causing external web links, skipped as a result of the user option setting “Skip external links”, to be reported as “broken”, instead of as “skipped”.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to be able to backup files to the same folder as the target file. This feature was previously not working.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that SharePoint sites containing child files are automatically mapped during the Inoculate process. This allows users to successfully inoculate files in SharePoint without knowing in advance which SharePoint sites contain child files, and mapping those sites, prior to running the Inoculate process.

Adobe Acrobat plug-in was fixed to be able to handle Acrobat files that contain data at the beginning of the file, prior to the file header. Such files previously could not be processed and were reported as “corrupt”.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed that was causing some SharePoint sites to not be recognized and mapped correctly. Files in these locations can now be detected and processed.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to provide a setting for the Modify Links function that allows the user to select whether or not LinkFixer Advanced will check rename rules for characters that would cause illegal paths in Windows. By default, LinkFixer Advanced checks all rename rules for illegal characters, to protect against accidentally modifying links in a manner that would result in invalid links. Users who have parent files containing links with command data (containing illegal characters) appended to the file paths and wish to have those links processed by LinkFixer Advanced, can now disable this feature.

Microsoft Word and Excel plug-ins were fixed to eliminate a bug that caused processing of some Word and Excel files with macros containing the “Dir” command to fail.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to eliminate a bug that caused some ASPX files in SharePoint to be reported as corrupt when they were not.

Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in was fixed so that it now returns the correct error message when attempts to modify links fail because no file exists at the destination location.

Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in was enhanced to recognize and correctly handle files that use the “Best speed” method to compress serialized OLE links. These files were previously reported as corrupt.

Microsoft Visio plug-in was fixed so that files containing embedded OLE objects no longer return an OLE error.

A bug was fixed in the MicroStation plug-in that caused a new Windows “handle” to be created, but not terminated, for each file processed. This had caused the number of open handles to steadily increase when DGN files were processed.

A bug was fixed in Microsoft Word and Access plug-ins that caused a new Windows “handle” to be created, but not terminated, for each file processed. This had caused the number of open handles to steadily increase when DOC and MDB files were processed.

Microsoft Excel plug-in was enhanced to recognize and modify links contained within data-acquisition commands. These commands establish data connections to an Access database, but were previously not recognized by the plug-in.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that caused sections of the Dashboard to sometimes appear to overlap.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a setting to enable or disable previews in process wizards. Disabling previews can save users time waiting for these previews, when preparing to process large files sets.

1. 2.1.0 (5 August 2013)

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to add support for Microsoft Office 2013 file types.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to add support for Microsoft SharePoint 2013

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to add support for Microsoft Visio files.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to be able to recognize and process “mailto:” links and http links containing a “query” section.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to run from the command line using a saved settings file. This will allow unattended operation of LinkFixer Advanced using a batch file.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with the ability to import rename rules in bulk from an Excel spreadsheet.

LinkFixer Advanced’s module that processes files on WebDAV servers was completely re-written so that your files on SharePoint (and other WebDAV servers) will be processed faster.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a completely-rewritten, faster, more efficient method of obtaining the SharePoint DocumentID for files, with a rewritten, more efficient ability to obtain DocumentIDs for files located in SharePoint sub-sites, and with a new ability to convert links containing DocumentID addresses back to their full-filespec absolute addresses.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with two new Rename Methods in Modify Links: “Convert links to SharePoint Document IDs” and “Convert links from Document IDs”. These functions are useful when you are moving files into or out of SharePoint, or when you initially implement DocumentID service for files within SharePoint.

LinkFixer Advance was enhanced so that the user now has the choice to install the program so that it can be used by all users of the computer, or only by the current user. This gives you additional flexibility in using LinkFixer Advanced.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with an address bar in all folder selection screens. This address bar displays folder path addresses as you select them on the screen, and also allows you to paste a folder path into the address bar in order to quickly navigate to a specific folder. This may simplify your selection of folders in situations where the path to a specific folder is long or complicated.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that child files no longer need to be licensed file types in order to receive a linkID instead of a checksumID during the Inoculate process. Using linkIDs to track child files is more accurate and dependable than using a checksumID.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced so that all sub-systems now send log entries to the same LFA.log file, instead of to several separate log files. This will help our developers find and fix bugs more quickly for you in the future.

LinkFixer Advanced logging performance was optimized by adding a separate write thread. This should allow LinkFixer Advanced to process your files slightly faster.

LinkFixer Advanced reports were enhanced to provide additional information in the Summary section about the numbers of password protected files, inaccessible files, hidden or system files, email links, external web links, internal document links, and other/unsupported links encountered during Scan. Reports were fixed to clarify and simplify informational messages in the body section and to clarify some error messages in the Errors section. Messages for “unlicensed”, “unrecognized” and “unsupported” file types were fixed to improve clarity. These improvements and fixes will make the reports more informative and easier to understand.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced to add to the user interface a new button to rescan, and report the status of, all network connections. This feature enables LinkFixer Advanced to recognize and access network resources that were mapped or connected after LinkFixer Advanced was started. This will allow you to identify and connect to any network resources that will be needed while running LinkFixer Advanced, but which are not currently connected or authenticated.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced by adding file selection (“browse”) buttons to the Rename Rule creation box. This will make it easier for you to create rename rules, and help you eliminate typographical errors in rule paths.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with checkboxes to allow users to enable/disable individual rename rules in Move/Rename and Modify Links. This will allow you to create batches of rules, but only activate individual rules as you need them.

LinkFixer Advanced was enhanced with a “New scan” option that clears from the database the results of previous scans. This means you no longer need to navigate to the “Options | Database” screen in order to clear the database before starting a new scan.

A bug was fixed that caused certain Windows 8 applets to stop working after running LinkFixer Advanced.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that links with relative paths from the root directory are now parsed and resolved correctly.

A bug was fixed so that the user option to “Force Links Absolute” after Move/Rename now works. This function was previously broken.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to remove file monikers from Excel links when attempting to resolve links to specific Excel worksheets and cells, so that only the link to the child file (but not the worksheet or cell address specification) is passed into the Excel plug-in. This eliminated an error, experienced by some users, where some links in Excel files were reported as broken when they really were not. These links are now reported correctly.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to display a warning message if LinkFixerService (a fail-safe crash-prevention module) doesn’t start properly along with the rest of the application, while allowing LinkFixer Advanced to continue running with LinkFixerService disabled. This allows you to continue to use LinkFixer Advanced while we fix whatever caused LinkFixerService to start improperly.

LinkFixer Advanced now tests at start-up whether it has read/write/delete access to all folders it will use in normal operation. This fixes an exception that occasionally occurred if LinkFixer Advanced did not have complete access to a “Temp” folder.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to eliminate an exception that occurred when attempting to get child file “last modified time” and file size on SharePoint files.

Two different LinkFixer Advanced bugs were fixed that produced “null reference” exceptions at start-up and when changing any settings.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to recognize and retain brackets in Excel links that were previously getting lost. This bug was causing links with brackets to be modified incorrectly.

LinkFixer Advanced now correctly handles links that point to folders instead of to files. Such links previously produced an error message and were incorrectly handled.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to correctly handle several different types of “file access” errors. These errors previously caused files that were actually present and accessible to be reported as missing or unreachable.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that links with a specific type of link path construction, pointing to Excel files, are now handled correctly in instances where they previously were not.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that some links to external sites are now being validated in instances where they previously were not. These links were being reported as broken when they were actually valid.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced handling of file permissions was fixed to correct an issue that caused some links in parent files to not show up on Scan reports.

LinkFixer Advanced now installs two additional Microsoft Visual C libraries to fix an issue where PDF files caused an exception during the “Force Links Absolute” function. Force Links Absolute now works with UNC paths to PDF files.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that the process progress indicator more accurately reflects actual progress. Previously, the total or “target” number for completion was not taking into account the number of child files, discovered during the scanning of parent files, which also needed to be scanned.

LinkFixer Advanced now correctly parses links containing the “#” symbol, and links containing multiple periods in the file base name. These files previously caused errors, and were not correctly processed.

LinkFixer Advanced now correctly processes links formatted as “file:///\\server\sharename”. Such links were previously not recognized or processed.

LinkFixer Advanced now correctly processes links formatted (incorrectly) as “file://”. Such links were previously ignored, but are now recognized and processed, even though they do not contain the standard three forward slashes.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to eliminate an “OutOfMemory” exception encountered while scanning multi-terabyte file sets. LinkFixer Advanced was unnecessarily holding in memory some link path information that eventually, on huge file sets, would accumulate to fill all available RAM.

LinkFixer Advanced now correctly finds child files with filenames containing HTML encoded characters (such as the %20 sequence that represents a “space”). Links to such files were previously reported as broken.

A bug was fixed where the Inoculate process failed on some links with UNC paths.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to eliminate an issue where some files selected by the user to be cured were not being shown in the preview of files to be cured and were not being cured.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to correctly show, on Move/Rename and Modify Links reports, all links to files inoculated using the LinkFixer Advanced alternative inoculation method (“checksumID”). Such links were previously missing from the reports.

LinkFixer Advanced was fixed to correctly move and rename files from one SharePoint site to another, while maintaining correct DocumentID paths. Files moved from one site to another are assigned new DocumentIDs by SharePoint, but the links to these files were previously not being updated by LinkFixer Advanced with the new DocumentIDs.

A bug in LinkFixer Advanced was fixed so that file counts in LinkFixer Advanced dashboard and reports match with file counts from Window Explorer. The counts in the dashboard and in the reports previously did not take into account hidden and system files that were counted and reported by Windows Explorer.

LinkFixer Advanced now correctly forces links to lower or upper case when that user option is selected during the Move/Rename process. Selecting these options previously resulted in no changes in the links.

A LinkFixer Advanced bug was fixed that prevented some unknown/unsupported child file types from being cured. Unknown/unsupported file types are now cured correctly.

Microsoft Excel plug-in has been enhanced so that it can now recognize and process links in XLSX files containing the new link prefix “=HYPERLINK”.

Microsoft Excel plug-in was fixed to correctly handle Excel 97-2003 files with relative links containing the “..\” link construction.

Microsoft Excel plug-in was fixed to eliminate an “Invalid C runtime parameter” error that previously occurred while rewriting some XLS files.

Microsoft Excel plug-in was fixed to correct an error where hyperlink text was being incorrectly changed in some Excel files where one hyperlink path was contained in multiple different cells.

Microsoft Excel plug-in bug was fixed that caused Excel files to be opened in Office 2010 “protected mode” after the Move/Rename process modified links contained in drawing objects.

Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in was fixed to eliminate instances where some link text in PPTX files was being incorrectly updated by the Move/Rename process. This error occurred occasionally in cases where the link text was the same as the link path. The link path was being correctly updated, but link text was not.

Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in was fixed to eliminate an “overflow” error that occasionally occurred while renaming very long links in PPT files.

Adobe Acrobat plug-in was fixed to eliminate an “array size” error that occurred while renaming some links in PDF files.

Adobe Acrobat plug-in bug was fixed that incorrectly reported some PDF files as corrupt.

Adobe Acrobat plug-in was fixed to eliminate an error reading data streams in PDF files that was previously causing the LinkFixerPlus Read-Write sub-system to repeatedly restart.

Microsoft Word plug-in bug was fixed that caused some links contained in nested fields in DOCX files to be rewritten incorrectly.

Microsoft Word plug-in bug was fixed that caused some password protected DOCX files to be mishandled because they were not being identified as password protected.

AutoCAD plug-in was fixed so that the switch controlling the option to “Update XReference names...” now works correctly. All Xref aliases were previously being always updated to the Xref file name.

AutoCAD plug-in can now correctly determine the AutoCAD installation directory under Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems.

AutoCAD plug-in was fixed to correct an error that previously caused the rewriting of some DWG files to fail with “error 5200”.

InDesign plug-in was fixed to recognize and correctly process links in INDD files that were previously not recognized.

1. 2.0.5 (11 January 2013)

Initial release.