Hey All - We use Egnyte. Its a Hybrid Cloud file server, and works with all these files. AND NO WORK AROUND. I know a bunch of other marketing firms use Egnyte as well for this issue. Works great! Good luck. Basically it is built exactly how a file server is from a permissions and access standpoint, but is based in the cloud so you can get access form anywhere. It also has the hybrid option to bring the large file locally when in the office. Supper convenient. Think is Box and your file server had a baby.

here is their site: egnyte.com

I ran across this workaround...though, it doesn't keep you from having to do it every time someone else collaborates outside your local network, it does make it much easier to deal with.
Im my situation, im simply resyncing BOX drive files to a new computer, so i've only got to do it once.

I'm not entirely sure how up-to-date this is, but...
Dr Scripto has two APPLESCRIPTS for this very issue...yes, they cost..but minimal. And as you guessed, only work on macs.
They were posted in 2017, but a recent comment from march 2020 says its worked great.
Ive used a few scripts from Dr Scripto and they are bomber.

https://www.drscripto.com/indesign-search-and-replace-link-paths/
https://www.drscripto.com/indesign-image-relinker/

The first is for BOX, DROPBOX shared type scenarios where you only need to replace the initial part of the path string.
The second is for the more complex scenarios where it will replace any root path and search every folder on that drive/server for the missing links and update the path and index accordingly.

All of this is speculative, I haven't used it yet...but ran across this post searching myself.

I'm interested in a solution for this one, hope to hear something from somewhere soon!

My InDesign files are in SharePoint documents and I have synced folders on my local drive. Several people check files out and in all the time, both on Mac and PC, and the links are always missing until you 'Relink to folder' again, and again, and again.

Thank you in advance :)

WHERE ARE YOU ADOBE? Please get back to us on this. The ability to choose Relative or Absolute links is one of the most basic functions needed for content creation w/ linked files. WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO MIGRATE OUR WHOLE PROJECT ARCHIVE W/OUT EVERYTHING BREAKING FOR THOUSANDS OF DOCS & needing to be fixed manually. Epic "duh."

As another user mentioned, the subscription costs too much to still be w/out this by now.

How is this simple concept not implemented after all these years? How can Adobe make such solid and complex stuff on one hand and be so GOD AWFULLY IDIOTIC STUPID so many other times??

Do the programmers and app design managers LOVE having its user base think of them as the stupidest people on the planet all the time?

This feature is probably the most basic functionality that any user designing documents with linked external documents could possibly ever want when it comes to linked files. This is 2020 already. Stop putting in stupid features and fix this hobbled linked file function so that literally EVERY corporate client can create documents to share without having to do workarounds.

Your software costs too much for us to continually have to deal with this ****.

Seriously.

OH no! I'm working on a structure where exactly need relative links and now I recognize InDesign cannot handle this?! I think this should be basic stuff and Adobe does not deliver. So I have to reconfigure everything back! It costs me hours. I really should take a look at the Affinity products ...

Another bump for allowing choice between relative and absolute links for assets. This feature is long overdue. I'm not even on a design team. I'm just moving back and forth between my laptop and desktop, and the app keeps re-linking every time I go from one to the other.

Kelly –

That is exactly what InDesign should do—but on command, instead of having to futz around with renaming things.

I have this "lack of relative links" problem all the time when I archive a project, and then later restore it to a different path name. Although the relative positions of all linked files are the same, for some reason InDesign still retains the old absolute paths, forcing a relink step.

If I'm doing a simple document, where all links are in a single subfolder, this is fairly easy—relink one, InDesign finds all other missing files from the same folder. But doing this across a multi-part Book document is a nightmare.

Paul

We have the same issue. We store files on a central server and copy them to local machines to work on. Each project is kept in an individual folder which is copied wholesale, so the relative path from the InDesign document to the linked image doesn't change. But because the paths are stored in absolute form, they must be relinked each time. If we have multiple versions of an image in different directories, it becomes hard to work out which version to link to, and time-consuming to do it.

I have a simular issue.
we are sharing indesign files between companies - one works with windows one works with mac os
. both are using the same image server over vpn. the windows path begins with a drive letter (let's say s:). the mac path with /volumes/..., the rest of the file path is identical. if a mac user opens the shared indesign file, all image links are broken. I think, relative link paths would solve the problem. Or please implement a feature to change the absulute link path for external files.

I have a similar issue regarding hyperlinks created in InDesign.
I've created a 280 page document in InDesign CC (2017.1 release) and it has 1000 hyperlinks to supporting PDFs in separate sub-folders within the same folder as my InDesign document, and its resulting interactive PDF.
But all the links are absolute, not relative. I need to distribute this document along with all the supporting evidence but the file hyperlinks in the final PDF are non-functioning because they aren't relative.
Anyone know a way around that?

I'm under the impression that mac creates relative links, and windows absolute.
Any thoughts on that?

This is a baffling limitation. There are two problems:

1. Collaborators are sharing a file, but the absolute path is different. This is common via DropBox, if the InDesign file on a network drive mounted differently, if it's stored in a revision control system.

2. It's hard to isolate copies of a document with their assets. If I copy an INDD file (plus its images) to another folder, now I have all these undesired links back to the original working folder. I can't easily create isolated copies. This makes unplanned changes (e.g. if I change the content of images in the original working folder) impossible to prevent, unless I manually prune

3. If I'm zipping up a set of folders that contain INDD files and linked images, I can't tell if I have zipped up everything.

If I could CHOOSE whether I wanted an absolute or a relative link for each file, then I wouldn't have this problem. :)

I have exactly the same issue. We are a Team of 5, working on different places, synchronising our files through Dropbox business. Everytime we are opening an Indd file that another team member had worked on, all the links to images are broken, although they are just in the subfolder of the main file. I can see in the path that yes, the absolute path always starts with the team members harddrive, so of course the link is not working anymore. BUT why is Indd so stupid to at least just look in the subfolder around, if by chance ALL the linked files are there?????????? This sucks biggest time.

It drives us crazy and we are losing time and nerves.

I do agree with Alex.
We extract documents with images from the database in a zip package.
We work with the documents in our desktop computer and when we finish the job we move them to a server. If someone else opens the documents will have broken links, but all the images are in a folder at the same level of the documents. With relative paths won't be broken links to fix.
Please, implement that.

I don't think this would be an indesign issue.

I have worked at many companies where all indesign files and links are kept on a shared server where multiple people edit these files. I have never experienced an issue with broken links due to shared files (unless someone link images from their desktop). My current workplace has individual logins for each computer (Macs) and those logins are used to connect to the server (Windows) and files are shared constantly.

The links in our indesign files starts with the top level server folder (i.e. DATA/Design/Job/Links) however if I do a file info from Apple Finder the complete file path is indicated (i.e. afp://123.456.78.90/DATA/Design/Job/Links).

Your described situation would drive me insane! I think you may need to liaise with your IT people to resolve this.

I have a similar issue> this may help: http://documentgeek.blogspot.com/2011/01/indesign-absolute-vs-relative-links.html