Re linking images using Googledrive

[Gigatronix Pete]

Hi gang

I created a company brochure which is stored and accessed only via Googledrive so that both myself & our Taiwan team can access it whenever we wish.

I first created a folder for the actual brochure Affinity file & then a folder for all the brochure images all in the same place on google drive.

I opened the Affinity file (via Googledrive) & then linked all the images to the brochure!

So we then had all the images and the main brochure file saved in the same place on Googledrive.

It’s fine whenever I open the file (again via Googledrive) from here in the UK but whenever anyone from Taiwan opens it they get the “Linked resource files are missing” warning.
They then have to go through and re link all 65 image files individually! L

We need to be able to access the brochure from both sides of the world but not have to re link each time! ...Is there anything we are doing wrong?

Also is there a way to re link all the files at the same time as they are all kept in the same folder?

I don’t know if it makes any difference but I use a PC & the Taiwan branch use Apple Macs!?

[v_kyr]

What happens when the Taiwan group opens a local copy of that brochure (a local hold copy from the brochure's Googledrive contents), do they have to relink images then too?

[Gigatronix Pete]

Hello @v_kyr thanks very much for the reply but am not sure what you mean by local copy?

When they open the file I original created they have to re link the images ...once they have relinked them all it's ok, after that & works normally!
 

[v_kyr]

1 minute ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

...but am not sure what you mean by local copy?

With local copy I mean a download of the whole brochure from Googledrive onto their harddisk and thus not opening/accessing the brochure directly from Googledrive instead.

[Gigatronix Pete]

Ah i see, i will check with them and ask!  ...but we always try to work/open files in Googledrive, as we assumed once we download a file it will lose the links anyway!

[v_kyr]

5 minutes ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

...as we assumed once we download a file it will lose the links anyway!

Nah if one and the same folder/directory structure is used everywhere (locally on harddisk as on Googledrive too) then relative link paths should usually be kept the same then. - Handling should here be manually via download/upload in a similar fashion, like using a server based version control software/system, with checkin/checkout data transport where you always work on a local copy of the data and not directly on the server stored shared data space.

[Gigatronix Pete]

Ah ok thanks  ...so in theory as we have the main images folder & the Affinity file all on Googledrive, both Taiwan or myself (in the UK) should actually be able to either work via Googledrive or download the Affinity file to work on locally & it should keep the links either way? 

When you have to re link more than one image (as per attached image) & they are all from the same source folder is there a way to do them all at once?

..............................................................

"What happens when the Taiwan group opens a local copy of that brochure (a local hold copy from the brochure's Googledrive contents), do they have to relink images then too?"

Am still waiting on an answer from them for this but it may not be until tomorrow now as they finished work an hour ago!

[v_kyr]

3 minutes ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

Ah ok thanks  ...so in theory as we have the main images folder & the Affinity file all on Googledrive, both Taiwan or myself (in the UK) should actually be able to either work via Googledrive or download the Affinity file to work on locally & it should keep the links either way?

If the linked image path structure is kept relative to the main document (brochure) the same for the Win and MacOS Affinity Publisher versions, let's say something like

• "./Brochure/Assets/2018/*"

then APub should usually be able to find the images. But if the image paths are kept instead as absolute full pathnames aka "G:\My Drive\*", and the MacOS shared Googledrive access on Macs doesn't list the pathname then also as "/My Drive/*", then the associated files aren't found for the Macs. So there is often a difference between using absolute and relative file paths, and/or using shared net drives, which might be of a problem for finding the internal linked files then.

Thus I suggested trying out, if the linked-in files for the document maybe can be found on either system (Win/Mac) when using relative image paths to the document path on the local computer harddisk.

31 minutes ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

When you have to re link more than one image (as per attached image) & they are all from the same source folder is there a way to do them all at once?

Good question, since I don't use Publisher I can't tell if there is such an option, but hopefully some Publisher user here in the forum can tell you.

[Gigatronix Pete]

I think i understand what you're saying!  

Do you know if there Is a way of changing the file names for the images from absolute full to relative file path names?

[Gigatronix Pete]

Just a thought but someone has just asked me is there some kind of "Pack & Go" scenario (that bundles the assets and creates a bonded asset folder) with Affinity that we could use to solve this problem?

[v_kyr]

The APub help topic about Embedding vs Linking somehow suggerates that relative paths (?) might probably be used when linking, since it reads for the resource maintance ...

Quote

It's good practice to keep your linked resources in a subfolder within your document's folder. Not only does it keep your images in one place for easier management, but if you move your project to a new location, the links to your resources will always be maintained.

... though it doesn't explicitely tell for concrete how resource paths are stored/kept internal in documents. Also it just tells this here about the Resource manager at all.

Well embedding the resources (aka assets) into the document instead of linking should overcome with that find linked files problem, but might blow up the whole document size to huge then, depending on the size of the added image assets etc.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

The APub help topic about Embedding vs Linking somehow suggerates that relative paths (?) might probably be used when linking, since it reads for the resource maintance ..

One of the Serif staff said something similar: that both the relative and absolute paths are saved, and that Publisher first tries the relative path.

[Gigatronix Pete]

Is there any kind of pack & go scenario with Affinity?  ...as this would perhaps solve the problem!

Also is there any way to re link multiple files as we currently have to do them all individually!?

[walt.farrell]

36 minutes ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

Also is there any way to re link multiple files as we currently have to do them all individually!?

If you Open a document which has missing Linked files, you get a dialog asking if you want to find them, and three choices: Yes, No, and Resource Manager.

Choose Yes (not Resource Manager), and when you find the file that comes up in the dialog Publisher will find all the missing files that are in that same folder.

[Gigatronix Pete]

Great thanks very much Walt!

 

[Gigatronix Pete]

@walt.farrellI tried what you said & it works fine for me (on  my pc) but I have just tried that with our Taiwan branch (ref my initial problem above)

We are creating a brochure & everything we have is stored on googledrive with an assets folder for the brochure. But when Taiwan try to open the brochure's (i created here in the Uk on my pc) they have no links to images!

They all use Apple Macs & when they did as you suggest they can't open the folder as it's grayed out (See attached image) & they can only highlight one image at a time!

Any ideas at all?

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

We are creating a brochure & everything we have is stored on googledrive with an assets folder for the brochure.

Another way would be (depending on the amount and size of the PNG images aka if they are not very huge), to make use of internal Assets. Meaning to create Asset categories imported/exported as an .afassets file (see here), so just that one has to be kept in sync and shared then.

Quote

Sharing assets with collaborators

You can share assets with collaborators who are using Affinity Publisher by exporting and importing asset categories.

To create an asset:

1. Select one or more objects or groups on the page or via the Layers panel.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Drag the selection into the Assets panel and release when you see a vertical insertion point.
   • On the Assets panel, click a subcategory's options menu and select Add from Selection.

Each item (object or group) in the selection is converted to a separate asset and placed in the subcategory with a default name.

 

[Gigatronix Pete]

Hello @v_kyr  ...thanks for the suggestion but the original images are 2 or 3 mb each, so fairly large & there are lots of them!
Also if we did this then we would lose the "link" functionality wouldn't we?  ...for updating etc!

 

[v_kyr]

2 minutes ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

Also if we did this then we would lose the "link" functionality wouldn't we?

Yes, since doc images then have to be dragged/inserted from the apps Assets palette. Also if there are a lot of big images which may do dynamically change over time, it's much more memory consuming and effort to keep things in sync. - If change/update is regulary used for that doc contents then linking images, as you already did, is your best option, as far as the APub OS versions would handle that in a sharable graceful manner.

[Gigatronix Pete]

@walt.farrell said "One of the Serif staff said something similar: that both the relative and absolute paths are saved, and that Publisher first tries the relative path."

@v_kyr ...the IT chap here (at work) thinks that the problem is because the Apple Mac's in Taiwan aren't finding the relative paths to the files in Affinity!
 
But If what Walt says above is correct it shouldn't be a problem should it?

[v_kyr]

Did your Taiwan OSX collaborators in the meantime tested what happens, if they try to use/open that publication project instead from a local MacOS harddisk storage place and not from the shared Googledrive?

I can imagine that actually the associated linked image path names might cause the problem for not finding the files ...

... since it looks to me that APub in this case uses and searches the whole absolute file path.

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, Gigatronix Pete said:

@v_kyr ...the IT chap here (at work) thinks that the problem is because the Apple Mac's in Taiwan aren't finding the relative paths to the files in Affinity!

Well, that's what I assume too here, thus said at beginning that they have to check if they can be found when stored locally on their harddisk, aka if it behaves the same or not. If it behaves the same, then I would assume that Affinity Pub doesn't make use of relative paths then at all, so then either a bug or shortcomming of the linking code!

[Gigatronix Pete]

I will double check with them again tmrw (they never replied to me on Monday & i was off work yesterday)
Thanks very much for you help, it's very much appreciated @v_kyr

[v_kyr]

BTW on your above shown OSX APub screenshot further the initial full absolute Windows style file paths is shown as a missing resource, meaning it's not shown as an to an Unix OS translated/converted file path there.

I don't know how the Affinity devs did internally implemented the OS related file path handling and it's showup here (like for such missing file panels etc.), but usually platform independent file handling code would take the OS filesystem paths into account and show it up in an OS related manner. The in your above image shown file path suggerates a Win based file path with drive letters and backslashes, which in case it isn't converted internally by app code in a software portable manner in this Win way doesn't make sense for a Unix file system.

• G:\My Drive\...\...\....png    vs   /My Drive/.../.../....png

However, maybe the software here always shows just the initial used file path string, even it internally did converted to OS related file paths (?). Some Affinity dev might can tell for sure how this is handled internally and if relative vs absolute paths are used at all here or not.

[Gigatronix Pete]

So in this scenario, if i had created the brochure on an Apple mac & uploaded the files to Googledrive, the company in Taiwan would not have this problem?