Transfer Files from Dropbox to OneDrive Without Breaking Links

As you transfer files from Dropbox to OneDrive, changes in file addresses disrupt the existing links associated with the original files. The consequence? Potential data misplacement, poor user experience, and possible security issues. Therefore, your IT team must introduce methodologies to preserve link continuity while migrating data.

This article explores why broken links occur, how they impact your business, and how to prevent their occurrence.

How Do Broken Links Occur When You Move Dropbox Files to OneDrive?

Links are of great significance in the context of cloud storage. They streamline user collaboration and simplify access to data. Rather than downloading each file and sharing it with coworkers or external stakeholders, you can directly share the links reducing the storage and network load.
You can also set various access levels when sharing links to grant or restrict specific roles. But when it comes to embedded links during cloud-to-cloud migration, you must exercise extra caution to ensure they function correctly by updating them.
When your internal IT team transfers files from Dropbox to OneDrive, the embedded links might break based on what they point to.
If the embedded links refer to any external resource like a website or blog, the link will not break.
However, if the embedded link in a file points to another file within the same cloud, then a problem arises. The link breaks and causes disruptions to work.
For example, let us assume there are two files – A and B in Dropbox. File A has an embedded link (https://www.dropbox.com/s/a1b2c3d4ef5/fileB.docx) that points to file B. After you migrate Dropbox files to OneDrive, the embedded link does not work as it still points to Dropbox, but the actual location of file B has now changed to OneDrive.

This results in broken links during migration, making the original links invalid. In such cases, to ensure the embedded links continue to work after the migration, you would need to manually update the links to point to the new locations of the files in the new cloud storage platform or use a migration tool that can automatically update the links during the migration process.

How Do Broken Links Impact Your Business?

Broken links can impact your business in several ways. Some of which are:

• It can affect everyday business operations and disrupt workflows.
• This results in a loss of productivity as employees spend time trying to fix the broken link and access the correct data.
• It can restrict access to the necessary data and affect team collaboration.
• It can cause security concerns if shared with unauthorized persons.

How Can You Fix Broken Links When Moving From Dropbox to OneDrive?

Broken links are one of the biggest technical challenges while moving data from Dropbox to OneDrive. So how do you fix broken links?
As manual ways consume a lot of time, cost, and effort for your internal IT team, using a robust link migration tool like CloudFuze’s LinkEx is the best alternative.
This tool simplifies the link migration while you transfer data from one cloud to another and prevents the occurrence of broken links. Even if you already face the issues of broken links due to improper link handling by a different migration vendor, LinkEx can still fix those broken links.
This eliminates the need to re-migrate all the data once again and alter only the broken links, saving significant time and cost.
Reach us for all your link migration needs, all under the same platform.