How to export links and how to change absolute links to relative l

[JoanR]

I'm helping someone with a very large book. It is a financial plan, that
links to many spreadsheets/workbooks. It is updated annually.

This year, due to situations not necessary to describe here, they need to
keep an editable version of 2010 while they put together 2011.

The end goal is to not overwrite 2010 and be able to safely create 2011.
Here's the challenge, the excel files they have been updating over the years
do not reside in the same folder or even one or two steps up on the file
heirarchy. They are spread out over multiple servers and absolute links are
used throughout.

What is the most efficient (and safest) way to work on 2011 while preserving
2010 as an editable document?

If it requires copying all of the linked spreadsheets and master publisher
file and putting them into one folder for 2011, is there way to export all
the links so I can easily find all those files?

Or do you suggest another solution?

Thanks in advance for you assistance.

Joan

 

[Jaime]

Are you asking about link in Publisher or Excel? I ask because this is a
Publisher forum, but you only mentioned Excel.

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking, why would what you do in one
document affect another one. If you have a workbook for 2010 with all the
links, can't you just save that as a separate doc for 2011, then all the
links would be the same without needing to copy each one? If the link are
set correctly, they will update in both files as changes are made.

 

[JoanR]

Hi Jaime,

Thanks for getting back to me.
Sorry I was not clear. I'm working with Publisher 2003
The financial book I refer to have been created in Publisher year after year
and links to multiple excel files, charts, spread out on multiple servers.
The regular SOP was to update the previous year's financial books, 2010,
2011. This year, they could not finish 2010 and need to start 2011. However,
they do want to go back and finish 2010 at some future point, so they need an
editable version of 2010 that is not being overwritten by 2011. These books
are large, some 200 pages and linked to just as many workbooks, sheets,
cells, if not more.

Looking at the book, all the links are absolute and the workbooks that are
linked to it are spread out over the server and not neatly put into one
master folder. For some reason, just creating a duplicate master book page
(I'll call it the index page because my background is web not Publisher)
still overwrites the 2010 book, unless I reset that book to manually update
links. It is my limited understanding that is the only way to do this, but I
fear someone will say OK and and all the links will be updated accidentally
for the 2010 book and overwritten with 2011. I'd rather have something that
is a bit more foolproof to preserve each year.

Because my background is web, I'm thinking reorganizing all the documents,
copying and putting them all under one master folder, and going with relative
links. Again, I'm not a Publisher user so there may be a different solution I
am not aware of.

If the solution is to copy and restructure, I hope there is a feature to
export the absolute link info so I can more quickly reorganize all the files.
Or some other feature/tool to make this task less daunting.

Any suggestions, pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Joan