Illustrator with linked files, saved on Google Drive or Dropbox, opened by team requires relinking

[wazzzzo]

The problem:

If a team member opens an illustrator file from our Google Drive the linked files all need relinking due to absolute paths (user/NAME/Google Drive/...). Unlink InDesign Illustrator can't do this automatically. This is massively time-consuming.

Specifics:

To aid efficient workflow, we use linked files e.g. a single copy of a client logo or product image. These single files are then used across multiple files within various projects each with individual project folders (linked to PO numbers). This avoids repetition of files and also aids in that a change to an asset can be quickly rolled out across multiple files or even projects.

Our whole company uses Google Drive. Whilst Adobe Cloud would solve this (presumably), it would complicate tracking and storing client work.

Solutions:

- Use InDesign instead. We currently do this but InDesign isn't the best program to design some of the work we produce (many reasons too numerous to mention).

Hopefully you guys can supply another solution that enables us to use Illustrator when we need to. Any ideas welcome.

From Adobe, it would be good to understand why Illustrator works in one way but InDesign works in a different way when linking files.

[Ton Frederiks]

Which version are you using? According to this UserVoice post it should now use relative links:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/324...

[wazzzzo]

I don't want to speak too soon but this might be working. We have run a new test and it opened for another team member flawlessly. No relinking. We have however, opened old docs and still have had to relink. Need more testing but fingers crossed.
Thanks for the heads-up @Ton Frederiks 

[Ton Frederiks]

It may be needed to relink old files once and save the file (I cannot test that), I hope that helps.