MS Office Relative Links --OR-- mount a local directoruy

donmccarty · 01-28-2012, 05:07 PM

I apologize if this has been discussed.

I have been searching all over the web and found some close solutions but nothing that works.

Here is what I have:
- Mac OS X v10.6
- MS Office 2011
- Dropbox

In my Dropbox folder I have several documents:
1 - Business Unit budget tracking across projects spreadsheet
Located in /dropbox/team folder/.

2 - Project specific spreadsheet which has links to #1 for some information
Located in /dropbox/team folder/project folder/.
So references to #1 would need to be something like ../BU.xls

3 - Status Report Master document that with links to #1 and #2 for some info
Located in /dropbox/team folder/project folder/.
Again, references would need to be like ../BU.xls and ./project.xls

I realize that the links in MS office are actually stored as HD:Folder:Sub-Folder... and so on. I'm only back to Mac for a year or so and I'm still understanding manipulating the OS at the lower levels.

This works great. The challenge I have always faced with doing things like this in MS Office is when someone else wants to use your documents. In Windows on a network share I used to solve this by having all participants issue a map command. When I needed to fake directories local or test something local, I would use the SUBST command.

My situation now is that dropbox is not a network share. It is a local directory and is stored in:
/users/MYNAME/dropbox/...
Everyone else on my team will have a synced version of the file but it will be in
/users/THEIRNAME/dropbox

I need to either mount '/users/MYNAME/dropbox' as a '/COMMONNAME' or understand how to create relative links in these MS Office documents.

I realize that the mounting portion of my question is not appropriate for this area of the forum, but I'm trying to address this from within MS Office as that will also address the cross platform issue that will inevitably come up when a Windows user wants to manipulate my documents. If this isn't possible then I'll have to go the mounting route and deal with cross platform functionality later.

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01-28-2012, 05:07 PM	#1
donmccarty Prospect Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 2	MS Office Relative Links --OR-- mount a local directoruy I apologize if this has been discussed. I have been searching all over the web and found some close solutions but nothing that works. Here is what I have: - Mac OS X v10.6 - MS Office 2011 - Dropbox In my Dropbox folder I have several documents: 1 - Business Unit budget tracking across projects spreadsheet Located in /dropbox/team folder/. 2 - Project specific spreadsheet which has links to #1 for some information Located in /dropbox/team folder/project folder/. So references to #1 would need to be something like ../BU.xls 3 - Status Report Master document that with links to #1 and #2 for some info Located in /dropbox/team folder/project folder/. Again, references would need to be like ../BU.xls and ./project.xls I realize that the links in MS office are actually stored as HD:Folder:Sub-Folder... and so on. I'm only back to Mac for a year or so and I'm still understanding manipulating the OS at the lower levels. This works great. The challenge I have always faced with doing things like this in MS Office is when someone else wants to use your documents. In Windows on a network share I used to solve this by having all participants issue a map command. When I needed to fake directories local or test something local, I would use the SUBST command. My situation now is that dropbox is not a network share. It is a local directory and is stored in: /users/MYNAME/dropbox/... Everyone else on my team will have a synced version of the file but it will be in /users/THEIRNAME/dropbox I need to either mount '/users/MYNAME/dropbox' as a '/COMMONNAME' or understand how to create relative links in these MS Office documents. I realize that the mounting portion of my question is not appropriate for this area of the forum, but I'm trying to address this from within MS Office as that will also address the cross platform issue that will inevitably come up when a Windows user wants to manipulate my documents. If this isn't possible then I'll have to go the mounting route and deal with cross platform functionality later.