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Question

Broken InDesign links between Mac and PC

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 10, 2019
6 replies
5119 views

Hello,

My company has both PC and Mac users who work from a network share. We have discovered we have a huge problem with certain InDesign files and links breaking. The network share we use is listed by IP address (no drive letters for Windows) and we house the images for our catalog there. Whenever a Mac user opens the document and saves it, it immediately breaks almost all of the links on the PC end. However, when a PC user re-links everything and re-saves the file, it's fine when a Mac user opens it. For most of our files, InDesign does a pretty decent job as locating things as volumes\drive\link folder when a Mac users opens it, and then converting to the IP address when a Windows user opens it.

For whatever reason, our catalog images in our InDesign files have this broken link problem. Nobody is moving any of the links. The images are in the same folders they've been in for the past several years. I want to stress that this does not occur in every single InDesign file. It also only happens with certain images. Things I've tried to fix the problem:

Manually re-linking images using bridge to drag and drop, instead of Command/CTRL + D

Changing file format to .PSD from .TIFF

Creating a single folder and putting every single image in it on different networks to test (even tried this on a PC share and STILL had the problem for Windows users)

Making sure to have Check Links and Search ForBroken Links Before Opening Document in InDesign preferences enabled

This problem does not carry over to any other Adobe program. The easiest solution I suppose would be to just relink from one folder, though this is very time consuming since we work from a share and there are over 1200 images that need re-linked every time a PC user has to open these documents. I know packaging is another solution, but since multiple users can be touching these files on any given day, there's too much of a risk of overwriting something important or having multiple/old versions floating about.

Any idea of a solution to this problem?

A

adobe ccm2616891

Participating Frequently

Has anyone got a fix for this issue?

BobLevine

Community Expert

Please start a new discussion. This one is 6 years old.

Include full details on the issue.

E

elellilrah

Inspiring

I created a video with 5 different methods for fixing broken links. I actually found 3+ methods that actually work when the original document isn't available. The other 2 methods may work if you have the Windows version of Indesign:

https://youtu.be/P8wPLywjXmo

Sslusny0304Author

Participating Frequently

Hello all,

I apologize for taking awhile to come back and leave this unanswered. Things got a bit hectic. After experimenting a bit, I was unable to figure out what exactly the problem was, but I did learn that one of our Mac users was also having an issue with breaking links as were the Windows users. With a little luck, I found that moving our entire folder structure to a different Drobo server seems to have fixed the issue. Links no longer break between PC and Mac. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'm wondering if it was the way the first Drobo server was set up? Thank you to everyone for your help and suggestions.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

What method of connection to the network are your macs using? AFP or SMB?

Mike Witherell

Sslusny0304Author

Participating Frequently

Edit: Sorry, my mistake. I originally said SMB. It's actually AFP.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Did you experiment with switching to the other method?

Mike Witherell

BobLevine

Community Expert

Try to alias the network shares to drive letters. I work crossplatform all the time with no issues at all.

Sslusny0304Author

Participating Frequently

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the reply. Would having the PC users alias the Mac share as drive letters end up causing the same problem for the Mac users? Would it then trick the Mac (in InDsesign) into thinking it needs to find a drive letter that doesn't actually exist?