Operating system is Windows 2003 with MS Office 2003. We have numerous Excel
workbooks with multiple spreadsheets in each. We have many hyperlinks within
each spreadsheet that links to many different directories/folders thus, not
allowing us to use Hyperlink Base.

When we establish the links they work for days, weeks, months, but then for
some unknown reason the links change. We have noticed one condition that
causes the hyperlinks to change. When we are updating a workbook and Excel
hangs up and when the files are recovered some of the links, or most of the
links and sometimes all hyperlinks change to an invalid path thus we are not
able to open the files. We have written a VBA procedure to help in these
instances by changing the links back to the original state. In addition, we
are backing up the files three times a day.

Following is the original value/address of the hyperlink:

...\..\..\dirnam1\dirnam2\dirnam3\dirnam4\dirnam5\ filename

where dirnam is the different directory levels.

Following is what the modified hyperlink changes to, but not always:

C:\myname\myhomedir\myid\dirnam1\dirnam2\dirnam3\d irnam4\dirnam5\filename

During the investigation of these issues we printed out all the hyperlinks
with in the worksheets. We noted that some hyperlinks have all slashes (€œ/€�)
while other hyperlinks have all backslashes (€œ\€�). There doesnt appear to
be a significance between them because both type of slashes work. But, why
is there an inconsistency and is there a significance between them?

Thank you for your time.