Links: relative paths?

[Roderick Bloem]

Hi,

I am writing a Word doc and an Excel spreadsheet. The doc
has many links into the sheet. I am writing these
documents together with a colleague at a different site.

My problem is that the links to the spreadsheet use
absolute paths. These work either at my site or at his,
but never at both, so that one of us can not update the
link. I have tried editing the link (using
tools->options->view->filed codes), deleting all of the
path but the file name, but that breaks the link.

Is there a way to use relative paths? Both files are in
the same directory.

I am using Word and Excel XP,

Best regards,

Roderick Bloem

 

[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Roderick,

I am writing a Word doc and an Excel spreadsheet. The doc
has many links into the sheet. I am writing these
documents together with a colleague at a different site.

My problem is that the links to the spreadsheet use
absolute paths.

It's not possible to use relative paths with LINK fields,
only for pictures and text files.

Assuming you can position these linked files "in line with
text" (no text wrapping), then there are a couple of ways to
change the paths quickly:
- Alt+F9, then use Find/Replace
- Create a document PROPERTY (File/Properties/Custom) that
contains the full path. Put a DocProperty field into the
LINK fields in place of the path. Then you only need to
change the path in one place. This can also be made
transparent by using an AutoOpen macro to handle checking
and changing the document property.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep
30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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[Torbjorn Caesar]

We are having the same problem. We are writing reports with links to data
in spreadsheets. Being a company we are more than one person and hence more
than one computer. We are on the border of going crazy for updates in
links, can it really be so that you can not send a word file and the related
excel file to a colleague to work on?? (without redoing all links, and we
have between 50 and 100 in the document). That sounds to bizarre to be
true.

I do not understand your "workaround" below with creating a DocProperty
field etc...

Looking forward to some help.

Thanks

Torbjorn

 

[Ron]

Create all related documents (Word, Excel etc) in one folder.

When you send the Word file, send also the files to which Word is linked.

Ron

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Torbjorn,

I do not understand your "workaround" below with creating a DocProperty
field etc...

- Go to File/Properties/Custom properties

- Create a document PROPERTY that contains the full path to the folder
the Excel files are saved in on the current machine you're working on.
(Note: use single, not double, backslashes)

- Go back into the document and press Alt+F9 to view the field codes

- In the first LINK field, delete the path information, leaving only the
spreadsheet name

- Insert/Fields and put a DocProperty field for your new document
property into the LINK field in place of the path.

- Remove the \a switch, if present, from the LINK field.

Repeat the last two steps for every LINK field in the document.

Now, when the file is opened on another machine, all you need to do is
change the path in File/Properties, then Ctrl+A, F9 to force the fields
to update to the new path.

This can also be made transparent by using an AutoOpen macro. The macro
would check the .Path property of the ActiveDocument, change the value of
the document property to this (assuming the Excel sheets are in the same
folder as the document, which would be advisable), then force the update
of the fields.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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