Checking hyperlinks within a Word document (.docx)

Scrutiny has long been able to check links within pdf documents encountered during a website scan. Scrutiny is a website crawling tool, it wasn't intended that you could point it at a local pdf and ask it to check the hyperlinks within it. But with a tweak, the current version can do this.

The option to check links with in a Word document isn't a frequently-requested feature, but it has arisen a couple of times, and this week I've had a task where the ability to test / examine the hyperlinks within a .docx document would be valuable.

It has been an enjoyable (if sometimes bewildering) curve to learn about the docx format. 

As with the pdf option, (with the option switched on) Scrutiny should now look in Word documents discovered during the scan and report the link url and link text, and test that link. This also works if the document is on the local drive and the hyperlink points to another local document. At present this will only work on the .docx format, not the older .doc format.

As I write this post, (5 August 2020) this feature now exists within the current development version of Scrutiny and is in testing. If you would like to try it, I'd be pleased to let you have a test version for you to try. (Contact me.) It's important to try this on as many different docx files as possible before release. 

(Scrutiny offers a 30-day trial, so you'll still be able to try the feature if you're not a Scrutiny licence holder.)

testing linked files - css, javascript, favicons

This feature has been a very long time coming. Website link tester Integrity reaches back to 2007, Integrity Plus and Scrutiny build on it, using the same engine.

But none of these crawling apps have ever found and checked linked external files such as style sheets, favicons and javascript. (This isn't entirely true - Scrutiny's 'page analysis' feature which tests the responsiveness of all elements of a page does include these linked files).

So this is a well-overdue feature and now it's built into our v6 engine and can be rolled out into Integrity, Integrity Plus, Scrutiny and other apps which use the same engine.

As you can see in the top screenshot, the new checkbox sits nicely beside the 'broken images' switch (which has existed for a very long time). The option can be set 'per-site' (except for Integrity, which doesn't handle multiple sites / settings)

With that option checked, linked files should be listed with your link results (obviously there's no link text, that's given as '[linked file]').

This feature is in beta.

[update: the beta version of all three apps containing this new feature is available for download on the app's home page]