In a similar post (below), I asked about creating hyperlinks in Excel. However…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=252149]
What if I move the Excel file onto a CD along with all the source files to which I have created links? Has the link already become specific to one path on the “C” drive, or will it know to check on the CD, once everything is copied over???
Hmm…Will all my hyperlinks become invalid once I move everything over to CD?
Hyperlinks are either absolute or relative-
Absolute = http://box.foo.bar/directory/file . No matter where that linked is clicked, it will try to access data from box.foo.bar. It isn’t very portable, and is a bad way to do things for data on your own server
Relative = /directory/file . That will always worked - even if clicked on a desktop computer or run from a CD, as long as the directory and file it is looking for exist in that path relative to the start directory.
In Excel, instead of using the “Insert Hyperlink” feature which is a user friendly, mouse-oriented feature to “point and click” my way to the file…can I type in the actual path to create a relative link? (Or, is there a user-friendly way to do so?) And, even if I can type in the path, can I create a hyperlink to a path which is not yet valid? The path will be valid once the files are burned onto the CD, but I can’t burn first and then create the link on the now-already-burned Index file (included on the CD)…because now the Index file is read-only! (Hence, chicken and egg.)
In short, I want to burn a CD-R of numerous documents (in various folders and subfolders)…and have the index file on this CD as a very easy directory. I want the hyperlink to ONLY look on the CD and nowhere else…even if it sees a similar path on my “C” drive…when I am using the disk. (Recall, this is for distribution to others, not just for me.)
When Grave says there is a relative link, what would be the syntax for such a link?
Tell
The easy way to do it is to put all the files that are going to be on the CD (including this excel file) in the same directory on your hard drive so you can keep everything simple. Then make the links in Excel to those files as you normally do but where it says Address erase the C: and leave the / and everything after it. In other words, a relative link in this case starts with /
Have fun!