ReplaceMagic and SharePoint On-Premises — Bulk Broken Link Repair

SharePoint on-premises refers to the versions of Microsoft SharePoint that organizations host on their own servers rather than in Microsoft’s cloud. ReplaceMagic supports all actively maintained on-premises releases: SharePoint 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition. Whether your organization is consolidating farms, renaming servers, or preparing for a migration to SharePoint Online, ReplaceMagic provides the tools to find and repair broken links in every document library without opening a single file manually.

How ReplaceMagic Connects to SharePoint On-Premises

ReplaceMagic connects to SharePoint on-premises through the SharePoint Client-Side Object Model (CSOM) and REST API, using one of the following authentication methods:

• Windows Authentication (domain credentials) — The most common method. ReplaceMagic passes your Windows domain username and password to SharePoint, which validates them against Active Directory. No additional configuration is needed on the SharePoint side.
• Anonymous access — For SharePoint environments where anonymous read access is enabled. Rarely used for document processing, but supported.
• Legacy Authentication Mode — For environments where modern authentication is disabled or where the SharePoint server requires forms-based or basic authentication. Enable this in the ReplaceMagic Configuration → SharePoint tab when standard Windows Authentication fails.

Performance Advantages Over SharePoint Online

Unlike SharePoint Online, on-premises SharePoint does not enforce API throttling (HTTP 429 rate limiting). This means ReplaceMagic can process documents at a higher sustained rate. You can safely increase the parallel processing thread count beyond the 3–5 range recommended for SharePoint Online — values of 8 to 15 threads are typically well-tolerated by on-premises servers, depending on your server hardware and network bandwidth. Higher parallelism translates directly to faster project completion for large libraries.

What ReplaceMagic Preserves

Metadata preservation is just as important on-premises as it is in the cloud. After modifying a document, ReplaceMagic restores the following SharePoint properties:

• Last-modified date and modified-by author
• Content approval status (Approved, Rejected, Pending)
• Version history — each processed file is checked in as a new minor or major version
• Check-in and check-out state — locked documents can be force-checked-in if the Enforce Check-in option is enabled in configuration

Common On-Premises Migration Scenarios

• SharePoint on-prem → SharePoint Online: URLs change from intranet format (http://intranet/sites/team) to cloud format (https://company.sharepoint.com/sites/team). ReplaceMagic can process the source on-prem library, apply the URL transformation, and upload corrected files to the target SharePoint Online site.
• Farm-to-farm migration: When moving from one on-premises farm to another — whether due to hardware refresh, consolidation, or disaster recovery — all embedded URLs referencing the old farm must be updated to point to the new farm’s URL.
• Server rename: If a SharePoint web application URL changes because the underlying server or load balancer hostname changes, every document containing that hostname in a hyperlink or OLE reference will have a broken link. ReplaceMagic resolves this with a single find-and-replace rule applied across all affected libraries.

Legacy Authentication Mode

Some SharePoint on-premises environments — particularly older SharePoint 2010 and 2013 farms — are configured to use forms-based authentication or have modern authentication protocols disabled. In these cases, standard Windows Authentication connections from ReplaceMagic may be rejected by the server. Enabling SharePoint Legacy Auth Mode in the ReplaceMagic Configuration panel switches the authentication handshake to a compatible mode. This setting has no effect on SharePoint Online; it applies exclusively to on-premises connections.

Network Requirements

ReplaceMagic must be installed on a Windows machine that has direct network access to the SharePoint on-premises server. The machine running ReplaceMagic must be able to reach the SharePoint web application URLs over HTTP or HTTPS. VPN connectivity, firewall rules, and DNS resolution for the SharePoint hostnames must all be in place before you begin. No components need to be installed on the SharePoint server itself.