How to Create a Link so a Document appears in another SharePoint Library

For SharePoint Server 2016

Often I get asked for a work around to the fact that you should never upload the same document to multiple SharePoint libraries.  Trying to maintain two copies of a document is ugly and never recommended!  So then how do we meet the need, that can sometimes be crucial, to have a document that is located in a particular home library “show up” in another library.  When I say “show up”, I mean be visually shown with the other documents in that library but in reality be a shortcut to the real document stored in an outside library.  A way to accomplish this easily is to use the “Link to a Document” feature that can be turned on for any library.

Part 1:  Enable the library to contain this type of content

Note: This first part only needs to be done once per library.  Full or Administrator privileges are needed.  But after this setting is turned on, even someone with only Contribute privileges can setup the link in Parts 2 and 3.

1. Go to the Library that you need to create a link in. Click on the Library tab and select the Library Settings
2. Click on Advanced Settings (A).       
3. Set Allow management of content types to Yes (B). Click OK.
4. In the Content Types section, click on Add from existing site content types (C).
5. In the box called Available Site Content Types, find the one called Link to a Document (D) and Add it to the other side.  Click OK.

Part 2:  Get the document URL

1. Go to the library containing the file you are creating a link to.
2. Click once on the desired file’s more ellipses (E)
3. Click once in the URL box (F). Then rt. click and choose Copy.
   

   

    

Part 3:  Setup the link to the document in the other library

1. Make sure you are in the library that will contain the link.
2. Go to the File tab
3. Click on the words of the first icon New Document to make a drop down list appear. A list of the content types that have been enabled for this Library will be shown.
4. Select Link to a Document (G).
5. In the next window, enter a name for the linked document. Paste in the URL you copied in Part 2 into the Document URL box (H).
6. Click OK. The linked document will appear in the library and its icon will have a curved arrow to indicate it is a link (I).

 

Advantages:

This “Link to Document’ feature gives so much flexibility to be able to open and modify documents outside the library without having to actually navigate there.   It also allows you to mix content type. The URL box can be used to add a link to a particular website or a link to a file in another system.

For those of you using SharePoint Online, the steps are a little quicker, as Part 1 typically does not have to be done.  See this article for the particular steps for linking to a document in SharePoint Online.