Here is a SharePoint Online trick that I discovered many years ago, which I have never seen anyone document.  Say that you would like to have a link in your SharePoint page, for instance  in the navigation, that goes to a different place depending on the user’s language.  How do you do it?

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One way, of course, is to use an app like PointFire 365, but did you know there is an out-of-the box way to do it without any apps or programming?

It all starts with a “News link”.  First, go to a page that has a News web part and select New

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Select the “News link”.  This will prompt you to enter the URL of the page you want to go to (in the site’s default language). Cut and paste the URL.  Don’t type it, it’s very slow and makes you stop a few seconds between each character.

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Scroll to the bottom of the panel and hit “Edit news link details”

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You can save the link.  But also notice the “Translation” button in the command bar.

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It has already automatically created an item in the site pages with a name based on the link title and an “.aspx” extension.  If you want to edit one of those, use the URL of that aspx file (note that URL, you’ll need it later) and add “?stay=true&Mode=Edit” to the end to prevent it from redirecting away while you are trying to edit it.

Press that “Translation” button, and “translate” (copy, really) to, in this case, French.  If you’re using PointFire Translator Express, the button is named “Translate Now”

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When it’s done. right-click on “View” to get the URL of this new page.  It’s the same as the URL of the original aspx file, but with the “fr” folder name.  Paste it in our URL bar and add “?stay=true&Mode=Edit” to the end.

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Click on “Edit” if required, and now replace the link with the URL of the French page.

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Save the translated link with the new URL.

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Now you can edit your navigation and enter the URL of the original aspx file, without the extra parameters, and save it.  When you click on that navigation node you just created, it will go to the English version of the page when your display language is English, and to the French version of the page when your display language is French.  What is your display language?  Suffice it to say it will use the same complicated and confusing rules as SharePoint normally does to determine which page to show you.

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Let’s be clear, this is not a documented or supported feature, it’s more of a hack that works almost all the time.  There are two redirections competing when you follow that initial link: one that wants to redirect to a different page in the“/fr” folder based on your language, and one that wants to redirect you to the external link.  It happens that the language redirection happens early in the page load and the link redirection happens late in the page load process, so the language redirection happens before the other redirection has a chance to execute. There is no guarantee that this will always be the case.

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If you have questions or need further assistance shoot us an email at sales@icefire.ca

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