WD97: When and Why Link Fixing May Not Work

• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows

SUMMARY

If you create a Web page using the August 1997 Word 97 Web Authoring Tools Update, and insert links to objects such as files, images, or sounds, the Check Links feature may prompt you with options for correcting broken links when you save the page.

This article discusses when you may or may not be prompted to fix links, and when the link fixing feature may fail to repair the links in your document.

MORE INFORMATION

Conditions Necessary for the Link Fixing Options Dialog Box

Word displays the Link Fixing Options dialog box when all of the following conditions are true:

• You use Save As to save a file for the first time, or to specify a new location for an existing file.

  -and-

• There are relative links (either hyperlinks or image source paths) in the file.

Conditions Preventing the Link Fixing Options Dialog Box

Word does not display the Link Fixing Options dialog box when any of the following conditions are true:

• You set the hyperlink base property (base path) of your document. For more information, see the "What is a Hyperlink Base?" section later in this article.

  -or-

• You change the hyperlink base property of your document. Word cannot automatically repair links in this case.

  -or-

• The only images in your document are OLE objects, such as WordArt and Clipart, created in the current editing session.

  -or-

• The only hyperlinks are absolute hyperlinks. Absolute hyperlinks cannot be broken.

Conditions for Failure of Link Fixing

Link fixing may fail to repair the links in your document when any of the following conditions are true:

• When your page contains images and you save the page to a network drive, if you choose Update Links instead of Copy Images, the links will point to locations on your computer. For example, you may be able to access the following link

        file:///C:\My Documents\MyPicture.gif
  

  but other users on the network cannot access it.

  -or-

• When you set the hyperlink base property of your document, and you insert a video or background sound, the video or sound file is never copied to the base path.

  -or-

• When you save the default (index) file of a Web site to a local disk, Word may not be able to locate the images. For example, a default (index) file of a Web site is

        http://www.microsoft.com/officefreestuff/
  

  To avoid this problem, include the HTML file name when opening from a Web site. For example:

        http://www.microsoft.com/officefreestuff/default.htm
  

If you have a set of documents in a directory on your hard disk and these documents contain links to each other, select "Don't Fix for Hyperlinks" when you save the files to the network drive. This preserves the relative links between files.

What is a Hyperlink Base?

When you create a hyperlink in a document, the hyperlink can be a fixed file location (absolute link), or a relative link. An absolute link contains a full address, such as c:\My Documents\Sales.doc. A relative link contains an address relative to a base address: the hyperlink base of the containing document.

Use a relative link if you want to move or copy the file that contains the hyperlink, or the linked file to a new location. By default, the hyperlink base of a document is the location where it is saved, although you may specify any location.

For example, assume you have an HTML document called Doc1.htm located in C:\My Documents. By default, the hyperlink base is C:\My Documents. Therefore, when you insert a relative hyperlink to C:\Windows\Image1.bmp, the following hyperlink is inserted into Doc1.htm:

   ..\Windows\Image1.bmp

   \Windows\Image1.bmp

How to Set a Hyperlink Base

To set a hyperlink base, follow these steps:

1. Open the document you want to set a hyperlink base for.

2. On the File menu, click Properties, and then click the Summary tab.

3. In the Hyperlink Base box, type the base path you want to use for all the relative hyperlinks in this document.

REFERENCES

For more information about the Web Authoring Tools, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q163299
   TITLE     : WD97: Web Page Authoring Tools AutoUpdate

   ARTICLE-ID: Q172745
   TITLE     : WD97: Editing Web Browser Path Creates Duplicate Entry

   ARTICLE-ID: Q172747
   TITLE     : WD97: What's New in the August 1997 Web Page Authoring
               Update

   ARTICLE-ID: Q173146
   TITLE     : WD97: Run from Network Installation for Web Authoring
               AutoUpdate

   ARTICLE-ID: Q172502
   TITLE     : WD97: Troubleshooting Setup for the Web AutoUpdate Feature

NOTE: If the Assistant is hidden, click the Office Assistant button on the Standard toolbar. If Word Help is not installed on your computer, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q120802
   TITLE     : Office: How to Add/Remove a Single Office
               Program or Component