: Relative paths for image links in inDesign We've got a large indesign file that several people are dipping in and out of on several machines, to do this we've got the indd file and the /images

@Alves566

Sorry for barging in like this [especially since I don't know InDesign that well] but InDesign looks like it's sharing the same principle as Illustrator, so, why don't you create a Homegroup like setup and instead of working on Dropbox, create a shared work folder and all of the other users access the file directly from your computer.

This way you avoid getting broken links.

Best of luck!



Update from comments:

Think of it this way, Dropbox has the ability to sync files between the server and your computer, creating a Dropbox folder on your computer, right? Well, you share that same folder with the others. This way, all others are working on Dropbox through your computer.

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@Rivera951

We have InDesign files that sometimes share graphics, so the proposed solution by Adobe for sharing files and folders -- putting the graphics directly in the same folder as the indd file -- would cause its own headaches.

Instead, using a variant of John's solution with drive x:, but in the OSX environment, we do the following:


share the folders that have the indd files in them (we use SpiderOak, but Dropbox would work equally well)
create a sparsebundle that will contain the linked image files. By mounting a sparseimage as a volume, the linked files will have the same path on different computers with different users
mount the sparsebundles at boot (by dragging into login items)
sync the files within the mounted sparsebundle volume (again, we user SpiderOak, but there are other alternatives)


With this setup, different users can manage the indd files without changing any links, and the linked images can be kept in a common, shared location.

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@Si6392903

Ive setup both computers to now run InDesign CC and even though when you check the paths in the link panel it shows the being local to each machine ie. User/Sam/Dropbox/.. it somehow seems to find the files, im not sure if it does this as it knows its in Dropbox or if it works the absolute path backwards so when it finds the Dropbox part it knows where it is, but either way this now seems to work in InDesign CC.

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@Smith574

Easiest solution is to put the INDD in Dropbox and run your whole project from there.

Alternatively, you should get everyone to move their Dropbox folder to the same location on their machines. Or you can try mapping a new drive letter to fake it:

On Bob's machine, the Dropbox folder is in c:/Dropbox. With c: mapped to X it is x:/Dropbox

On Fred's machine, the Dropbox folder is in c:/user/fred/Dropbox. map the fred folder to X, to get x:/Dropbox.

To map non-root folders, you may need to download Visual Subst, which lets you attach drive letters to folders. (Download at your own risk - I think it is safe, but don't want any blame if you find a virus buried in there!)

I haven't tried this myself in InDesign, but I have ran Xampp local web servers using this method of mapping Dropbox folders.

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@Caterina889

Unfortunately no.

InDesign (and Illustrator) first look in the document folder. If the links aren't there, only absolute paths are used.

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