Microsoft - Please fix Word's relative hyperlinks!

Anonymous
2013-03-30T16:05:59+00:00

Microsoft Office,

After too many hours of experimentation and working with your "level 2" tech support (Case no. 1201292910), I learned that relative hyperlinks no longer work properly in either Word 2007 or 2010 native (.docx) file formats (Both Windows8 and XP).  As of 2013-03-27 (or earlier) if these types of documents are saved with a new name ("Save As"), their hyperlinks get converted to absolute links as soon as they are saved - you'll see the full paths in their addresses when you view them in "Edit Hyperlink".  The only work-around that I could find (other than always using the same document name - and I'm not sure that will always work) is to save the file in the old (.doc) format.  (So far Excel doesn't seem to share this problem but I haven't checked the other Office apps.)

It seems to me that it would be nice to have the option of easily selecting either the "Relative" or "Absolute" hyperlink option when each link is created or edited.  But, at a minimum, the type of link shouldn't change when the document gets saved with a new name!

I'd greatly appreciate knowing that you have reviewed and understand what I have "said".  I've invested a substantial amount of time and effort in attempt to provide constructive feedback for the benefit of both Microsoft and its Office users.

Thank You!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-11-09T07:38:58+00:00

If anything, you used the hyperlink base - which I previously mentioned. That is the nearest Word has ever had to relative hyperlink support - it's even been described in MS doc as providing relative hyperlinks (which it really doesn't, but that's another story). It is still available. See: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Set-the-hyperlink-base-address-for-relative-hyperlinks-in-a-document-83a7b7aa-a3a0-4491-8575-1b0ca207f825

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Anonymous
2018-04-25T21:06:49+00:00

It 'isn't fixed' because it 'isn't broken'... Get over it.

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Anonymous
2013-09-14T14:39:48+00:00

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-11-09T21:10:20+00:00

    No, I never used hyperlink base. As mentioned, I probably needed to manually enter, or correct the addresses in the document – but I only needed to do this once. At some point around 2010 Word started changing the addresses to absolute every time the document was accessed, and there seemed to be no way to prevent it. All I could do is open the document in Notepad to fix the links, and vow never to open the document in Word again.

    This may in fact be a bug, because Word has a checkbox in web options/files: "update links on save” which seems to address this problem, but doesn't seem to work.  There's also an option to "update automatic links at open", which I also have unchecked.

    I read an article about using hyperlink base, and it seemed problematic, but I should give it a try. But it seems that if that "update links on save" button were working properly, Word might be functioning as pre-2010, and users might not be ranting and pulling out their hair…

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-09T07:19:13+00:00

    I no longer have my copy of Word 6, but do know that I was once able to construct web pages without this crippling "bug", as I would call it. I probably had to manually enter the relative links, but that was easy enough. This stopped working somewhere around Word 2010. It's sad because Word is a uniquely powerful web page tool -- I doubt that Google Docs can match it...

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