Replacing link path in Illustrator

[Karen JR]

Hello, so I have to work around with my storage space so I moved many of my image files into my hard drive. When I opened the Illustrator fill, apparently all the images are still with the old path therefore it said missing. I thought if I link one missing image into my hard drive, the rest will automatically be detected they are in the same hard drive folder. But it didn't. I have to manually link each one of them to the hard drive which causes me pain in the ass.

I know in InDesign there is a script to update the link path, I was wondering if there is a similar function in Illustrator that can do the same thing.

Thank you.

[m1b]

Hi @Karen JR, I've written a script that helps in this situation. See my answer on this thread. Basically the script does a "find/change" on the link paths. So if you find "My/Old/Path/" and replace with "My/New/Path/" it will perform that find/change in all the document's link file paths.

- Mark

[Karen JR]

Hi Mark,

Wow, this is amazing! If you don't mind me asking, how can I save the script in Illustrator?

With InDesign, since I downloaded the script file directly from the internet, I just put the file into the script folder. But I couldn't find the script panel in Illustrator so I was a bit confused.

Karen

[m1b · Accepted solution]

You are right that Illustrator doesn't have a panel like Indesign's Scripts panel. Scripts must be put into the appropriate folder and then, after restarting Illustrator, they appear in the File > Scripts menu. Or, you can run any script by choosing File > Scripts > Other... and navigating to the script file (see next).

To save my script copy the script text (nothing else—make sure it doesn't have any other bits and pieces on either end) and paste into a text editor on your computer. Then—this is critical—you must save it as plain text with the file extension ".jsx". If you are on MacOS, you can use TextEdit and must do Save As and choose plain text file, on Windows I think NotePad can save as plain text too.

If you get stuck, there should be plenty of videos or tutorials if you search for installing scripts in Adobe Illustrator. Good luck!

- Mark