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Forum Discussion
Dropbox file sharing with InDesign causes broken file paths when shared
Device
MacBook M1 Pro
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
Sequoia 15.5
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
v229.4.5197
Syncing Status
Synced
Question or Issue
Does anyone have a good file-sharing system for InDesign?
Currently using Dropbox and working from home. I have a Dropbox folder which I share with colleagues. I work solely from this, so all content I use is structured within it. When they open my files, my colleagues in the office have broken links because Dropbox uses absolute paths and so the user name part of the path is different for each of us, resulting in the missing links. We don't want to package everything as not all work is complete and it is disruptive having to drop what you are doing to do this - we've even experienced issues with packages and missing links anyway. InDesign doesn't deal in relative paths. We are using MacBooks and Sequoia, apparently we can't move the folder outside of the User folder, although I'm checking this again with Dropbox.
It used to work well in Adobe Cloud but they discontinued the CC synced files ability.
We have a server and I have a VPN and access but this is slow with images and is not a good solution to work with.
Does anyone out there have a good solution for this? Anyone tried, One Drive or SharePoint with success? Please say you do!
Many thanks in advance.
13 Replies
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Hi Jay,
I've been talking to an InDesign Facebook about the issue and one of the members on there is using the same set up and doesn't have the issue. Here's what he said:
Strange, we use Dropbox for six years now. The only issue we have is that if a document use placed files from various places that are not synced it takes a while to find them. But no changed links. We just sync the folders we need, and sync them off when we don’t need them.
It must be possible to work in this way?
- Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Thanks for the feedback, currently, there wouldn't be a method to determine why the InDesign documents work differently between your setup and the other user's setup.
It's possible that all users on that team are using File Provider, meaning that all Dropbox folders are located in the CloudStorage location, regardless of which Mac they were using.
Have you been given the option to use File Provider for your team?
It is worth noting that File Provider does also affect other aspects of syncing, which can be seen in this article, which may or may not affect your workflow.
