I have a user created in Active Directory and logging into an XP Pro PC and
using Excel XP. He created an Excel 97 spreadsheet with active links to
other Excel spreadsheets when he was on NT. In Office 97 the link was
created with specifically a drive letter of H: to the location of the data
(e.g H:\Data\SectionA\excel spreadsheet.xls).

Since this user was migrated to XP last year and updated some of the links
it now links as the full DFS path to the data. This is fine apart from now a
data group has been created in Active Directory that maps a H: drive along
the DFS structure further onto the physical server 2 levels in (i.e DFS
starts at "\shared" for J: and "Shared\Data\SectionA\" for H:). The H: drive
is required to run a database and needs to be H: for legacy reasons so this
cannot be changed.

The problem is that Excel gets confused between the 2 DFS drive mappings.
When the link is created it is created as per the H: drive DFS (not a
physical drive mapping). Some time later after the spreadsheet has been
opened and closed several times it tries to find the linked files as per the
J: drive DFS mapping and thus the links are set up incorrectly (2 levels
different as per the difference between the H: and J: drives).

The question really is:
- How can I force Excel to keep the specific active links either:
a) As a specific drive letter and specific path to the other speadsheets,
or;
b) As a DFS link but keep either the H: drive mapping DFS or the J: mapping
DFS

I cannot find an option of how to change how the link is created and if this
is intermitent I cannot determine why this is happening. Can this be the
case that other people get into the file but traversing through the J:
drive, making updates, which then confuses Excel? It seems to be a problem
with how Excel interprets the DFS mappings for the active links between the
spreadsheets.

If anyone can help it will be greatly apreciated.

Steve