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dombi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 8, 2003
126
60
We have the following problem with newly purchased Macs.

A department is using Windows Server 2008. Windows computers on their network mount specific folders from the server, which get mapped as drives D, E, F, G, etc.

Some files (that are created in Excel or AutoCAD) use links to other files on the networked drives. For example an Excel file can pull information from the "Customers.xls" file on drive "G". This works great under Windows, but Excel on the Mac cannot find the files.

We think this happens because under OS X, the specific network folder from the Windows server gets mounted as the folder's name. While under Windows it gets mounted with a letter from the alphabet.

Excel under Windows stores links using those network drive letters. And Excel on the Mac has problems accessing the linked content, since it cannot see drives with letter names.

Similar thing happens under AutoCAD. AutoCAD is also looking for linked content on drives with letter names.

Is anyone using a similar setup? Is anyone working Excel files stored on network drives, that contain links to other networked files?
Any ideas on how this problem could be solved?
 

Detrius

macrumors 68000
Sep 10, 2008
1,623
19
Apex, NC
Sounds like the solution is to stop referencing files on different server mounts. If that's not a solution, maybe you can figure out where on the Mac the programs are *actually* looking and set up symlinks so that it winds up going to the right place.
 
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