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Forum Discussion
Dropbox sharing for Designers - links to images in Illustrator ai files
I have noticed a problem with opening Illustrator ai files in dropbox. If I link all pictures and open later the same file everything works perfectly. If I open an ai file created by someone else, ma...
- Hey bananasplit, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.
It sounds like the links you're referring to are relative links and you might be better off using absolute links instead.
I won't be able to offer any help with that though as it falls outside of our remit.
That said, I'm not aware of a way to achieve what you had in mind, but I'll leave this thread open in case another user on the Community has something to offer here.
Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime.
Rich
Super User II
Super User IIThis isn't a Dropbox issue. This happens because applications typically use the full path when linking other files, and everyone's Dropbox is usually stored in a different location on their drive.
The Dropbox folder on your computer (let's assume Windows for now) is typically located in your user profile, which would be C:\Users\Johnheed\Dropbox. For me, it's C:\Users\Rich\Dropbox. If you embed an image or other file into your project, the embedded path will be something like C:\Users\Johnheed\Dropbox\SomeFolder\SomeFile.jpg. Since the Johnheed user folder doesn't exist on my computer, when I open that project, the embedded files won't be found.
The only way to resolve this is to ensure that everyone's Dropbox folder is stored in the exact same location, such as C:\Dropbox, and any shared folder is named the same across all users. Bascially, the embedded path has to be identical across all computers that will be opening the files.
Hi Rich, thanks. We are on all on Macs and some designers are on PC/Windows. So what would be the embedded path example for this? I'm not clear on what your saying or how to solve this across multiple users.
We work off a team Dropbox account and where the design team access the ai files AND the images that are linked to it never change. Also would syncing/uncyncing folders all the time impact this as well?- Lusil
Dropbox Staff
Hey Johnheed, thanks for reaching out to us about this.
I found this thread for you to check out where users discuss more on this.
Hope it helps!
- Rich
Johnheed wrote:
We are on all on Macs and some designers are on PC/Windows. So what would be the embedded path example for this?
There really is no solution for this that will work across multiple platforms. The only real solution is to get the application developers to support relative paths.
Здравко wrote:
... but set relative links would solve your problem (likely).
The problem is that most programs embed files using the full path to the file. Relative paths usually aren't an option. This is common across many different applications.
Hi Rich,
I am having the same issue and my team and I are both on Macs. I understand what you’re saying needs to be done, but I was wondering if you could explain how to actually do this on Mac.
Are you saying that both team members need to create a new user under “system preferences” in their respective Macs and make sure they name them the same. Let’s say we both name the new user “DB”. Then do we both designate under “Sync” within the Dropbox app that our Dropbox folder’s location is in the new user folder on Mac that we both created and named DB?
- JayHi demiberryman, technically, that could work, assuming you're only ever going to access the files on a Mac.
You don't need to create a new user, you could move the Dropbox folder itself to another generic location which isn't dependent on usernames.
Assuming you're using shared folders, make sure that the folders aren't renamed after sharing them, since this wouldn't change the shared folder name for everyone.
If you need any more details, feel free to message back!
