Microsoft KB Archive/173350

= WD97: When and Why Link Fixing May Not Work =

Article ID: 173350

Article Last Modified on 8/20/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 97 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q173350



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.



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

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:


 * 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.

