How to get a published Captivate project with links to PDFs to work

Ok. So I have contacted the chat support and reviewed some of the forums but I still can't get my projects to publish and link to the external pdfs.   There has to be a simple explanation and I would really appreciate it if someone would walk me through the process.  I need to do it for both .exe and scrom published packages. I have Captivate 2017 and simply don't get why another product (Articulate Storyline) can easily add resources while it is such a painful process with Captivate.