Creating a graph of connections between Office files?

Question

I'm preparing to move huge amount of files between file servers. The files are located in different shares within one of many servers. I thought it would be good to have clear vision of what is linked where, for instance: I've got many Excel files in share A and B - I'd like to see that some file from location A is linked (i.e. uses data from) to file in share B. This would allow me to better plan the migration process, so I'll know which shares should be migrated together. What software could I use to create a graph of (especially) Excel files and links between them? It would be the best if the software would be free or GPL.

Answer 1

You can use Gephi to visualize file connections by importing a CSV of links between Excel files and seeing them as a network graph. If you want something inside Excel, NodeXL can also show relationships as a graph. For a more technical approach, Python with libraries like networkx can scan folders and build a dependency graph of linked files across different shares.