Permanent URLs in SharePoint document libraries

We are looking to embed links to documents in SharePoint document libraries into spreadsheets and other documents to make it easier for users to quickly jump to the relevant document.  This is pretty trivial at one level, use right-click to copy the URL and paste into the target application, but what if the document moves?

I am not thinking of documents moving between document libraries, I am just thinking about documents to move from the “live” folder to the “archive” folder.  The problem is that the document URL includes the folder name.  This persists even if you change the view so that it does show folders.  Looking at the library in SharePoint Designer it is clear that SharePoint “actually” stores documents in folders.  In fact it looks as if the document does not have a guid but is linked to a particular list

Options

Redirection Library

A “global” solution that would not only accommodate this use case but would also manage the situation when content gets moved to another library would be implement something link the Zeven Seas Link Conductor which uses a redirection table to maintain redirection links.  While this is a neat solution it has drawbacks in the this instance

  • you would need to add an entry for every item even if it never moved
  • any changes have to be manually entered

Never move a document

Rather than using folders it would be possible to reorganise the library so that a column holds a status entry rather than moving documents from folder to folder.  The Encoded Absolute URL link would then remain the same.

In most circumstances this would be the most straightforward solution.

Other options

It would be great to hear if there are other options.