file linking in office 2003

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

I am going to send a query to MS about this ppt problem. Read this and tell
me if it makes sense.

I am a domain admin for a corporate environment and I am having an issue
with file linking within Powerpoint 2003. I have 2 users on different vlans
that are trying to access the same information from a storage server. The
server has a different IP on each vlan. When user A on vlan 1 opens the
powepoint and tries to point to a excel document on the server, the link to
the file shows up as: \\xxx.xxx.xxx.100\pathtofile\filename.ppt. Powerpoint
uses the server IP, rather than drive letter to point to the file. User B on
vlan 2 has access to the same powerpoint and excel document, but on that vlan
the server IP is \\xxx.xxx.xxx.101. As a result, the file linking fails,
user B cannot see or update the excel file unless he changes the link to the
file to \\xxx.xxx.xxx.101\pathtofile\filename.ppt, and in doing stops access
from user A.

The drive letter of the shared volume where the file is stored is the same
on each vlan. If they were to link to the file by the following means,
H:\pathtofile\filename.ppt each user would be able to access the powerpoint
AND the excel document without a problem. Is there a way to use drive letter
rather than IP? Changing the IP of the server is not an option.
 
JohnnySiggs said:
I am going to send a query to MS about this ppt problem. Read this and tell
me if it makes sense.
Click to expand...

It does. You've explained in very very well, in fact.

Note that the letter of the physical drive on the server doesn't make any
difference since the clients can't see that. But what happens if you map a
drive letter on the client computers to the share on the server drive?

It doesn't fly here (just tested it and it seems very determined to use the UNC
path rather than a mapped drive) but it may depend on your network setup.
 
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