Your collaborator wrote a document with lots of pictures, and cleverly kept the size of the document file short by linking the graphics files instead of embedding them. Now you need to edit the document on your machine.
You don't see any pictures.
Links in Word include the entire path name for the linked files. Word doesn't know about relative addressing. It isn't even smart enough to look in the same directory where it found the document file.
1. Microsoft's way: Edit / Links brings up a window that shows all links and lets you change them, manually, one at a time. Fine if you only have to deal with one or two pictures, lousy otherwise.
2. Commercial software: Maybe, if it exists. One program sounded promising, but it costs > $100, and when I called for information, the person who answered my questions said it wouldn't help.
3. Create a macro that does the job: This has to be a common problem, right? Hey, WordBasic experts, how come a macro to fix it isn't posted to the Web?
4. Use Edit / Replace to fix the contents of the fields: This is less tedious than (1), probably cheaper than (2) (which doesn't exist anyway), and faster than trying to learn how do roll your own WordBasic code (3).
Here's how to use Edit / Replace to fix the include fields in Word 6 for Windows. It's easier to do than to describe.
1. Put the document and its graphics files on the target machine. Make a copy of the document and put the original somewhere safe. Work on the copy, not on the original!
2. Open the copy of the document in Word.
A message box pops up telling you there are problems. Click OK to get rid of it.
The document will contain empty boxes where the figures were supposed to be.
3. L click on Tools / Options to bring up the Options window, and turn on the Show Field Codes option.
This reveals links to all linked pictures, which will look like this:
In this example, the name of the linked graphic file is NPE.EPS. Other graphic files linked to the document had different names, but they all lived in the same directory and they all shared the path string
F:\\USR\\DOCS\\MS\\NRNLAB\\COURSE\\E1\\DOCS\\
What you need to do is to change all occurrences of this path string, which was fine on your collaborator's machine, to whatever it should be on yours.
4. Figure out what the path string should be on your machine. If your document
and graphics files are in h:\dx, then the path string should
become
H:\\DX\\
The rule is simple: capitalize everything, and change path separators from \ to \\
5. Find the first field that needs fixing.
Two alternative ways to do this:
A. Just look at the document.
B. Use Edit / Find to locate fields. Start by placing the text insertion point at the beginning of the document. Then choose Edit / Find. In the Find window, L click on Special to get the list of things to search for, and choose the Field item. This puts ^d (that's carat d, not CTRL-d) into the Find What field. L click Find Next and you have located the first field. If it's not an INCLUDEPICTURE field, just keep clicking Find Next until you find one.
6. Get a copy of the path string that needs to be changed. There's something "special" about fields that keeps you from doing this by just lopping the leading { and trailing } off a copy of the field. You need to L click inside the field and use the mouse pointer or arrow keys to move the editing cursor (vertical line) to the start of the path string, as it is here (albeit barely visible)
Then select the path string and copy it just as you would do with any other string in Word (hold down Shift while pressing right arrow key, or hold down L mouse button while dragging editing cursor to the right).
7. Return to the Edit / Replace command. Paste the path string that needs to be changed into the Find What field.
Then enter the new path string into the Replace With field and press the Replace All button.
The fields will be repaired.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This search & replace operates on field contents only if it is launched while the insertion point is inside a field. It won't work if you have L clicked in the body text itself.
8. Now go back to Tools / Options and toggle the Show Field Codes option off. But you still see a document full of empty boxes instead of pictures, because the edited links need to be "updated."
9. It's easy to update all links at the same time. Use the Edit / Links command to bring up the Links window, which lists all links in your document. By the way, this window will immediately show you if any links still have the old path string.
To select all links, L click on the first one in the list, then hold down the Shift key and L click on the last one in the list. All will be highlighted. Then L click on the Update Now button.
Finally close this window and look at your document.
Ah, such craft, such art, what sublime satisfaction to merge transcendent text and graceful graphics into a harmonious whole . . .
--Percy Dovetonsils
Address questions and inquiries to ted.carnevale@yale.edu
Copyright © 1997 by N.T. Carnevale, all rights reserved.