WD97: When and Why Link Fixing May Not Work

ID: Q173350

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Word 97 for Windows

SUMMARY

If you create a Web page using the 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/
To avoid this problem, include the HTML file name when opening from a Web site. For example:
http://www.microsoft.com/default.htm
Tip:

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

However, if you specify a different hyperlink base, such as C:\ (and you do not move the documents or images), when you insert a relative hyperlink to C:\Windows\Image1.bmp, the following hyperlink is inserted into Doc1.htm:

\Windows\Image1.bmp

Note that the hyperlink is relative to the hyperlink base for Doc1.htm, and not the current location of Doc1.htm.

How to Set a Hyperlink Base

To set a hyperlink base, follow these steps:

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

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

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:

Q163299 WD97: Web Page Authoring Tools AutoUpdate

Q172745 WD97: Editing Web Browser Path Creates Duplicate Entry

Q172747 WD97: What's New in the Web Page Authoring Tools Update

Q173146 WD97: Run from Network Installation for Web Authoring AutoUpdate

Q172502 WD97: Troubleshooting Setup for the Web AutoUpdate Feature

For more information about setting a base path, click the Office Assistant, type "base path" (without the quotation marks), click Search, and then click "Set a hyperlink base for a document."

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:

Q120802 Office: How to Add/Remove a Single Office Program or Component

Additional query words: 8.0 8.00

Keywords : winword word97 kbwdinternet
Version : WINDOWS:97
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbinfo