Keep link to picture file when destination file moves?

[Matt]

I work for a large company and am getting tired of updating our company
letterhead each time a branch changes a phone number which is located on the
footer of all our documents eg faxes, letters etc.

I have printed our Word 2002 company letterhead template (c/w header and
footer) to pdf and then cut the header and footer and saved them as 24 bit
files which I then link to word doc as picture files.

This works OK when source file and destination file are in same folder but
when I copy the destination file to another folder and save as a new filename
the link is severed, resulting in a red cross in the top left corner of the
header and footer. The outline of the picture files is still viewable but
not the actual picture.

What I am aiming for is to only have 2 picture files on our server (ie
header and footer) and link every document template requiring a header and
footer to these files, thus making the updating very easy by simply replacing
the source files.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? Thank you in advance.

 

[Cooz]

Hi Matt,

Do you use the IncludePicture field (Insert | Field...) to link to the
pictures? If not, try it. This should work.
With this field, be aware of this: you can type the location of the target
in the Field-dialog just fine. In the actual field code however, "\" will be
replaced by "\\". For example "G:\temp\B.jpg" in the dialog reads
"G:\\temp\\B.jpg" in the field code.

Good luck,
Cooz

 

[Matt]

Thanks Cooz

The "Insert | Field" option appears to work in a networked environment,
providing that all users open, use, then save files on our local server. the
only problem is that the document file size has increased from 24KB to 1258KB
(including the 2 picture files @ 600KB each).

Furthermore, a lot of our users have notebooks and work remotely from our
local server. I was thinking about saving the 2 picture files in a standard
folder (eg C:\Letterhead) on each notebook so that they would link their
documents to that location in lieu of our local server. Whenever an updated
letterhead is issued, an email could be sent out to these users asking them
to save the 2 new picture files and overwrite the existing, thus updating any
future documents.

Theoretically, this would work. However I do see that when these users
download their files onto our local server and then disconnect from our
network, these documents would lose their links to the source files.

Is there a method in which you can have a primary link to a source file (eg
Server) and if that link is not available, a secondary link (eg Notebook)?

Any help would be appreciated.