Hyperlink Problem in a Cross-Platform Environment

[Christopher MacLeod]

For a year I've created CD-ROMs on my Mac for distribution to users in PC as
well as Mac environments. I thought I'd tested everything thoroughly by
running the CD on my home computer (G4 PowerBook with Office 2004 --
Panther, now Tiger) and on my work computer (Gateway laptop with XP
Professional with Office 2000). Perhaps I missed a step.

On the CD, a PowerPoint 2004 presentation serves as a sort of "home" file.
It contains links to various other files on the same CD -- some PDFs, a few
Excel files, and other PowerPoint files.

Links to the PDFs and to other PowerPoint files work well in either
environment. Until a few days ago, I thought that links to Excel files
worked, too. They don't, and I don't know why. I hope you can help.

Most links direct a user to a folder called "subjects," inside of which are
other folders, e.g., "nhlearnmore," inside of which are the files. Usually,
I create hyperlinks to the files through the "Action Settings" menu, then
check them and clean up the pathnames in the "Hyperlink" menu. The finished
hyperlink will look something like the following:
subjects/nhlearnmore/nhmills.pdf.

A link to an Excel file (e.g. subjects/nhlearnmore/nhpop.xls) works in a
Macintosh environment. On my PC I get a "file not found" message.

Thinking I'd outsmart the problem. I tried creating a link to the Excel file
on my PC and noticed that it reads subjects\nhlearnmore/nhpop.xls. (Note the
back-slash.)

This link works fine on my PC. But when I ported the folders to my
Macintosh, the link did not work. As a matter of fact, the PowerPoint file
opened on the Mac doesn't even recognize that a link exists.

FWIW, neither on my Mac nor on the PC did I actually type the pathnames.
Instead, I used the menus in "Action Settings" to point to the file I wanted
to link to.

Your help would be most appreciated. (Sorry about the long post.)

Chris

 

[Mickey Stevens]

Try placing the PowerPoint file and the Excel file to which you're linking
in the same folder before inserting/creating the link. The fact that the
Mac & PC use different path separators ("\" on the PC versus "/" ":" and
sometime "\" on the Mac) create inevitable problems if you're linking to a
file in different folder in a cross-platform presentation. Placing both in
the same folder when creating the link should eliminate the problem.

This and other problems arising from the platform divide are discussed on
this page of the PowerPoint FAQ:
<http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00281.htm>

 

[Christopher MacLeod]

Thank you for the work around -- it does the trick.

Oddly enough, I've discovered that the problem occurs only on the PCs in my
particular work environment where major "improvements" were made to our
system. On PCs elsewhere the links seem to work properly.

Chris