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I am going to move all my users' homefolders to a new location. Unfortunately the vast majority uses desktop shortcuts linking to server-stored files. In the old environment there is no set drive letter that people use, so the shortcuts all link to the servername itself. The new environment won't have this problem.

When I move all of their files, everyones shortcut is going to break.

Is there a way where I can make this transition easier for them? Mass-editing all visible shortcuts in a path and changing \server-x\home\file.jpg to \server-y\home\file.jpg?

Thanks in advance.

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  • You can force shortcuts to exists on a desktop through any number of ways.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 21, 2014 at 12:51
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    I suggest you place the shortcuts on the desktop this will replace existing shortcuts with the same name. In addition provide the shortcuts on a share drive, and send an email out, telling people to delete the old shortcuts.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 21, 2014 at 13:01

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For batch modification of shortcut files, you can try this software: Shortcuts Search And Replace (it is even available as a portable application).

Details:

They would install it (since there is a portable version it should not be too cumbersome for the operating system), and use it to change the properties of their shortcuts.

They can specify custom paths where to look for shortcuts, as well as standard paths such as the desktop folder as you mentioned, the start menu one and so on.

Then, this is a basic search/replace mechanism with two text fields, so you can provide them the patterns to enter (as in your question's description).

Afterwards, they can launch the research, preview the result, and apply the modifications or not.

The fact to make them use a software to manually apply the modifications is probably not the best practice, however this is the quickest solution I have in mind, and this is quite robust since it would handle any custom configuration they might have (custom paths and names for their shortcuts basically). Moreover, for that or not, this is in my opinion a useful utility to keep on hand.

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