Hyperlinks remain static within a Word doc. Why is that?

[Melody13]

When I insert a hyperlink to a word document it is remaining statis, not linking to anything. I have tried copying the link from the dropbox document as well as inserting it from the Word hyperlink option. Help!

[Walter]

Hey @Melody13 - sorry to hear about this. 

Could you please let me know the exact steps you take to insert your hyperlinks to your word document and if this happens to all of your word documents? 

If possible, could you send me a screenshot of the problem so I can have a visual as well? 

Thanks!

[Melody13 · Accepted solution]

I finally figured it out! Sometimes it takes reaching out to figure out what you are doing wrong! Thank you though!

[Walter]

Glad you managed to resolve your concern in the end Melody - I appreciate you taking the time to let me know too  

Should you ever come up with any other question, please let me know. 

Thanks for using Dropbox and have a lovely day/night @Melody13!

[paladin_iii]

It would be nice to see the solution !!!

[Walter]

Hey there @paladin_iii - can you elaborate on your query? Are you having the exact same issue as the OP described?

Could you forward me a screenshot of the problem along with the exact steps you take so I can reproduce on my end and have a better look into this?

Thanks in advance!

[paladin_iii]

Hi Walter:  I'm new to Dropbox. I'm trying to figure out a way to share some documents, that have a pointer in a directory automatically trigger execution of an MS Word document contained at the same directory level.

I found that I cannot use symlinks (Windows "shortcut"), (Unix shell relative addressing), to my great dismay.  

I have a hierarchy of directories used for a cooking "data base" where the directory contains files that are MS shortcuts that point into another directory at the same level.  For example, I have a directory "Cooking" below which is a directory "Recipes" and at the same level as "Recipes" I have a directory named "MeatDishes".  So, from "MeatDishes", I can click on the shortcut "Carnitas", and I go to the actual Word doc.

i.e.  .\Recipes\Carnitas.doc  

which should resolve into \Cooking\Recipes\Carnitas.doc from \Cooking\MeatDishes\Carnitas as a shortcut.

So, I'm looking for another way to do this.  I thought that Melody13's problem might be a clue for me to do this.

Are hyperlinks, embedded in a MS Word document, a solution to this dilemma ?

Thanks,   paladin_iii

[Walter]

Ah, thanks for the clarifications @paladin_iii - most appreciated.

I'm not sure about this (this question would be more suitable for Microsoft's Community) but I think that the only way for this to work would be for all members of the shared file(s) in question to have the Dropbox Folder on the same location ( for example CUser/Dropbox)- so as not to change the file's path. 

If other members try to access an absolute link from the mentioned files they'll probably get an error so I'd suggest using relative paths instead. 

While we are unable to support you in configuring Microsoft Word to work the way you'd like, we suggest perhaps using wildcards when doing this. Wildcards, such as "%HOMEPATH%”, if other users have the Dropbox folder located in the default location, would let you point to a location without having to worry about different usernames in the path (assuming that the links point within a location that all members of the share have access to). 

I hope this helps to some extent and please keep me posted on your progress.