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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, many pictures are not found and I'm supposed to find them and relink. If I relink, the person who created that ai file can not see them anymore and so on. All our team has the same difficulties. And that makes all work very uncomfortable. Maybe you could help us to solve such problem?

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Walter

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.

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Rich

This 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.

Johnheed

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

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!

Здравко

Hi @Johnheed,

I don't use Adobe Illustrator and am not sure if possible (in particular) but set relative links would solve your problem (likely). Try at least...

Good luck.

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.

demiberryman

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?

Jay

Hi @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!

bananasplit

Our design agency has been experiencing some issues with Illustrator and links on Macs. If User A creates an Illustrator file with images, closes the file and reopens it, it's fine. However, when User B opens User A's file, the links are all missing and we have to relink everything despite being on the same shared Dropbox. Indesign links are fine, its just Illustrator.

We did do a bit of digging to figure out how to solve this and we understand that links are missing because each of the usernames is different on each Mac. We did come across the solution to create a new user on each computer with the same username but this would require a lot of work moving programs and files over that are outside of Dropbox.

There was another solution we found which was moving the Dropbox folder to a generic location not dependent on usernames but we aren't too sure what an example of a generic location is that isn't an external server (we used to use a server but it was too slow which is why we moved to Dropbox)

Do any other designers have the same issue and how have you solved them?

Walter

Nina Quist

Hi, thank you for taking up this issue – I am having the same issues with 'broken links' when working with a shared dropbox as a team with different users/usernames.

We share InDesign files saving directly into the dropbox shared folder. Linking to images in the dropbox shared folder. No issues there for the single user working with the dropbox desktop app. All good. BUT when another user opens the InD-file to work on it ALL links are broken as the path is specific to each user.

I suppose this is a InDesign preference that needs to be changed..? Or maybe even on my MacBook..? Or how can this issue be fixed when sharing a dropbox folder as a team?

johnarmour003

Hi,

We have dropbox and want to use Adobe Indesign to place links for the same account on multiple Mac OS machines. When placing links into Indesign the path links to the users home directory which is different for each user. We need a method of placing links from the same path.

Rich

@johnarmour003 wrote:
When placing links into Indesign the path links to the users home directory which is different for each user. We need a method of placing links from the same path.

That's not something Dropbox can solve for you. Most applications, when linking to external files, use the file's full path, which will be different for each user when those files are stored in their user profile. Dropbox has no control over that.

The only solution involving Dropbox is to have every user move their Dropbox folder to a common location, such as the root of your system drive, so all links are identical, but that will no longer be possible on Macs since Apple now requires the Dropbox folder to be located in the user's CloudStorage folder.

ranezra

The only solution I've found is to put the AI project files in the same folder with the linked files (use 1 folder, not subfolders).