UNC filepaths appearing

[Ed]

Hi I work with lots of Excel spreadsheets each day and I have encountered a
problem with linked workbooks. In my office we have a naming convention for
shared drive locations e.g. z:\... is the mapping to one specific network
location which has a full path something like iidsfcomms\...
Links in workbooks show up as the mapped network location
z:\[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$F$8 etc but for some reason some times these filepaths
change to start with the full UNC file path
iidsfcomms\[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$F$8. This appears to happen quite randomly and
only happens for some of the links in the workbook not all the links. The
result is that some links link to UNC file name and some link to mapped drive
name. If you follow a link and refresh links all the links dont update
automatically as the should so it is a cause for concern.
What is happening and how can I stop it from happening? Thanks for your help.
In our office group we use Excel 2000 and Excel 2003 on XP machines I am not
sure what the network servers run on.

 

[Michael Bednarek]

Hi I work with lots of Excel spreadsheets each day and I have encountered a
problem with linked workbooks. In my office we have a naming convention for
shared drive locations e.g. z:\... is the mapping to one specific network
location which has a full path something like iidsfcomms\...
Links in workbooks show up as the mapped network location
z:\[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$F$8 etc but for some reason some times these filepaths
change to start with the full UNC file path
iidsfcomms\[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$F$8. This appears to happen quite randomly and
only happens for some of the links in the workbook not all the links. The
result is that some links link to UNC file name and some link to mapped drive
name. If you follow a link and refresh links all the links dont update
automatically as the should so it is a cause for concern.
What is happening and how can I stop it from happening? Thanks for your help.
In our office group we use Excel 2000 and Excel 2003 on XP machines I am not
sure what the network servers run on.

I have raised that problem before (in 2004); see
<http://www.officekb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/word-application-errors/10288/>
or
<http://groups.google.com.au/group/m...ors/browse_frm/thread/1d3c2739ee8fefbc?rnum=1>.
No solution was found then.

 

[Ed]

Thanks for your reply Michael. I couldnt follow the second link that you
posted due to firewall at work but the first link seems to suggest that the
probelm is of Word/Excel converting mapped drive names to UNC filepaths but
that is not the problem exactly that I am having. If Excel did this
consistently there would be no problem for me as all my file paths would be
UNC paths regardless of drive mapping. My problem occurs because it only
changes some of the file links to UNC file paths. Its the seemingly random
nature of what Excel is doing that I am trying to get to the bottom of. Is
there a way to get file paths to automatically link to UNC file paths instead
of the mapped network drive when linking workbooks? This might be a possible
workaround? Thanks for your help.

Ed

Hi I work with lots of Excel spreadsheets each day and I have encountered a
problem with linked workbooks. In my office we have a naming convention for
shared drive locations e.g. z:\... is the mapping to one specific network
location which has a full path something like iidsfcomms\...
Links in workbooks show up as the mapped network location
z:\[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$F$8 etc but for some reason some times these filepaths
change to start with the full UNC file path
iidsfcomms\[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$F$8. This appears to happen quite randomly and
only happens for some of the links in the workbook not all the links. The
result is that some links link to UNC file name and some link to mapped drive
name. If you follow a link and refresh links all the links dont update
automatically as the should so it is a cause for concern.
What is happening and how can I stop it from happening? Thanks for your help.
In our office group we use Excel 2000 and Excel 2003 on XP machines I am not
sure what the network servers run on.

I have raised that problem before (in 2004); see
<http://www.officekb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/word-application-errors/10288/>
or
<http://groups.google.com.au/group/m...ors/browse_frm/thread/1d3c2739ee8fefbc?rnum=1>.
No solution was found then.

 

[Michael Bednarek]

Thanks for your reply Michael. I couldnt follow the second link that you
posted due to firewall at work but the first link seems to suggest that the
probelm is of Word/Excel converting mapped drive names to UNC filepaths but
that is not the problem exactly that I am having. If Excel did this
consistently there would be no problem for me as all my file paths would be
UNC paths regardless of drive mapping. My problem occurs because it only
changes some of the file links to UNC file paths. Its the seemingly random
nature of what Excel is doing that I am trying to get to the bottom of. Is
there a way to get file paths to automatically link to UNC file paths instead
of the mapped network drive when linking workbooks? This might be a possible
workaround? Thanks for your help.

Ed

(The second link points to the same thread at Google Goups [which I find
hard to be believe anyone would block]).

In addition to the problem described in 2004, we also had random
instances where links --mainly in Word, but also in Excel-- changed from
mapped drive notation to UNC/URL notation, although not so much
recently. The only Excel version here is 11.8307.8221 - SP3.

In our situation, we definitely needed to preserve the mapped drive
notation, because an "F: Drive" would refer to different servers in our
offices, and having a document in London refer to a server in Brisbane
would take several minutes to resolve.

Good luck.

 

[Ed]

The problem your were having sounds exactly the same as the one I am having.
Specifically:

In addition to the problem described in 2004, we also had random
instances where links --mainly in Word, but also in Excel-- changed from
mapped drive notation to UNC/URL notation, although not so much
recently. The only Excel version here is 11.8307.8221 - SP3.

In our situation, we definitely needed to preserve the mapped drive
notation, because an "F: Drive" would refer to different servers in our
offices, and having a document in London refer to a server in Brisbane
would take several minutes to resolve.

Did you resolve it or has it just stopped happening on its own?

Thanks for your reply Michael. I couldnt follow the second link that you
posted due to firewall at work but the first link seems to suggest that the
probelm is of Word/Excel converting mapped drive names to UNC filepaths but
that is not the problem exactly that I am having. If Excel did this
consistently there would be no problem for me as all my file paths would be
UNC paths regardless of drive mapping. My problem occurs because it only
changes some of the file links to UNC file paths. Its the seemingly random
nature of what Excel is doing that I am trying to get to the bottom of. Is
there a way to get file paths to automatically link to UNC file paths instead
of the mapped network drive when linking workbooks? This might be a possible
workaround? Thanks for your help.

Ed

(The second link points to the same thread at Google Goups [which I find
hard to be believe anyone would block]).

In addition to the problem described in 2004, we also had random
instances where links --mainly in Word, but also in Excel-- changed from
mapped drive notation to UNC/URL notation, although not so much
recently. The only Excel version here is 11.8307.8221 - SP3.

In our situation, we definitely needed to preserve the mapped drive
notation, because an "F: Drive" would refer to different servers in our
offices, and having a document in London refer to a server in Brisbane
would take several minutes to resolve.

Good luck.

 

[Ed]

Michael I read your second link from the second post at home last night and I
see that you did not get to the bottom of the problem and gave up in the end.
Thanks for your help though. If there is anyone else that has encountered
this problem and might have a suggestion on how to fix it or investigate it
can you help me out please.

The problem your were having sounds exactly the same as the one I am having.
Specifically:

In addition to the problem described in 2004, we also had random
instances where links --mainly in Word, but also in Excel-- changed from
mapped drive notation to UNC/URL notation, although not so much
recently. The only Excel version here is 11.8307.8221 - SP3.

In our situation, we definitely needed to preserve the mapped drive
notation, because an "F: Drive" would refer to different servers in our
offices, and having a document in London refer to a server in Brisbane
would take several minutes to resolve.

Did you resolve it or has it just stopped happening on its own?

Thanks for your reply Michael. I couldnt follow the second link that you
posted due to firewall at work but the first link seems to suggest that the
probelm is of Word/Excel converting mapped drive names to UNC filepaths but
that is not the problem exactly that I am having. If Excel did this
consistently there would be no problem for me as all my file paths would be
UNC paths regardless of drive mapping. My problem occurs because it only
changes some of the file links to UNC file paths. Its the seemingly random
nature of what Excel is doing that I am trying to get to the bottom of. Is
there a way to get file paths to automatically link to UNC file paths instead
of the mapped network drive when linking workbooks? This might be a possible
workaround? Thanks for your help.

Ed

(The second link points to the same thread at Google Goups [which I find
hard to be believe anyone would block]).

In addition to the problem described in 2004, we also had random
instances where links --mainly in Word, but also in Excel-- changed from
mapped drive notation to UNC/URL notation, although not so much
recently. The only Excel version here is 11.8307.8221 - SP3.

In our situation, we definitely needed to preserve the mapped drive
notation, because an "F: Drive" would refer to different servers in our
offices, and having a document in London refer to a server in Brisbane
would take several minutes to resolve.

Good luck.

 

[Michael Bednarek]

The problem your were having sounds exactly the same as the one I am having.
Specifically:

Did you resolve it or has it just stopped happening on its own?

I did not find a definitive way to resolve it. Instead, we advise staff
to use cut/paste filenames as plain text in e-mails (where they chose to
use Word), and I wrote a small piece of VBA code that can reverse the
effect when it happens, which somehow occurs much less frequently now.
Then again, our staff is a fairly patient lot, and I'm not sure they
would actually raise each such occurrence with me -- they just wait for
the remote link to complete.

 

[Ed]

Thanks for that Michael. If I find a solution I will post it here.